Confidence in another person is just as ephemeral \u2013 one or two little incidents can queer a relationship.\u00a0 A missed block in football, an empty promise, or a moment of self-serving dissembling can have lasting effects \u2013 the normally tight spiral flutters as the quarterback imagines an oncoming 350 pound behemoth, there is a hair trigger on a Plan B, and routine explanations are now fact-checked.\u00a0 And then there is confidence in the workplace, especially in your boss.\u00a0 I have learned that this is a rare thing that must be cherished \u2013 a boss who has confidence in his team, who provides them opportunities to do what they do best, and then shares any credit for success.\u00a0 I got lucky in one of my first jobs, but have found it tough going since then, and after being thrown under the bus a couple of times, I ultimately decided that self-employment was the best option.<\/p>\n
Confidence in an institution is the bedrock of democracy, and like other examples, is hard to win and easy to lose.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at our military.\u00a0 I still remember the failed 1980 air raid to recapture the American hostages held in Iran, called Operation Eagle Claw.\u00a0 Helicopters flailed around in a sandstorm at the staging area, one ran into another and blew up, and the mission was aborted before even getting to Teheran.\u00a0 Somehow I wasn\u2019t surprised and thought, wow, I guess that there is some truth to the military expressions SNAFU (s<\/strong>ituation n<\/strong>ormal all f<\/strong>***** u<\/strong>p), FUBAR (f<\/strong>***** u<\/strong>p b<\/strong>eyond a<\/strong>ll r<\/strong>ecognition) and SUSFU (s<\/strong>ituation u<\/strong>nchanged, s<\/strong>till f<\/strong>***** u<\/strong>p) But while I lack confidence in the military as an institution, I do have utmost confidence in individual soldiers.\u00a0 For our anniversary, I got my husband an autobiography called American Sniper<\/em>, primarily because I am convinced that Nick would make an excellent sniper due to his birdwatching skills in detecting the slightest movement at great distances.\u00a0 Chris Kyle is celebrated as the most lethal sniper in On the domestic front, it turns out that our government is very interested in our own confidence \u2013 specifically our confidence as consumers, since an economy can only be healthy if it\u2019s growing and we are spending money.\u00a0 Economists are great at crunching numbers and making projections, but they cannot capture the spending habits of our elusive \u201canimal spirits,\u201d a term coined by the economist John Maynard Keynes.\u00a0 The methods for assessing consumer confidence don\u2019t strike me as particularly scientific \u2013 pollsters just call some 5,000 households on a monthly basis and ask random people four or five questions.\u00a0 All of the responses are collected and massaged a bit, and out spits a There are a couple of different surveys that claim to assess consumer confidence.\u00a0 I think that the surveys are really asking whether or not we have confidence in the government to manage the economy.\u00a0 Can a bureaucracy apply a deft touch to hit that sweet spot between irrational exuberance and recession, and do it in an equitable way such that protestors don\u2019t descend on Wall Street snarling at sleek bankers slinking around in chauffeured cars?\u00a0 But these questions would just be too pointed, so instead the surveys ask about such things as job prospects or whether or not you are thinking about upgrading your appliances.\u00a0\u00a0 I would love to be one of the random participants in such a survey \u2013 to be part of the pulse of the American economy.\u00a0 But I would be the pollster\u2019s worst nightmare.\u00a0 The polls limit your answers to three categories, i.e. better\/worse\/the same \u2013 that eliminate any kind of thoughtful or nuanced response.\u00a0 ABC News and Money magazine publishes the \u201cConsumer Comfort Index.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 One of the questions they would ask me is:<\/p>\n \u201cConsidering the cost of things today and your own personal finances would you say now is an excellent time, a good time, a not so good time or a poor time to buy the things you want<\/em> and need<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n Now presumably the pollsters have slaved over this survey, choosing each word very carefully so that everyone is essentially answering the same question.\u00a0 But the first question that I would ask the interviewer is to explain the difference between what I want<\/em> and what I need<\/em>.\u00a0 From my point of view, this is the most fundamental question that must be addressed by anyone who contributes to the big splat of the affluent American carbon footprint.\u00a0 Wants and needs lie on a continuum with an individual and shifting dividing line between the two, a line that may in fact reflect consumer confidence.\u00a0 What I think I \u201cneed\u201d may be an extravagant \u201cwant\u201d to someone who is struggling to get by.\u00a0 And if I am trying to be a responsible steward of this dear planet, I should reset my line and convert some of my \u201cneeds\u201d to more optional \u201cwants.\u201d\u00a0 For example, I just don\u2019t need out-of-season raspberries flown here fromChile, and I can be equally French by riding my bike to the farmer\u2019s market with a baguette sticking out of the pannier.\u00a0 But by now, the interviewer would have hung up in exasperation \u2013 the government doesn\u2019t really care how I self-identify needs and wants, it just hoping that I am going to be a patriotic American and spend some money.<\/p>\n The Feds wants our spending habits and economic policies optimally *******<\/p>\n So they use telephone surveys to probe our confidence and overall state of mind.<\/p>\n Are you going to buy a new car, a flat screen TV, or perhaps a diamond for your wife?<\/p>\n If so, these might be ******* indicators of an economy showing signs of life.<\/p>\n A healthy economy requires us to spend money on wants and needs for it to grow<\/p>\n But if we all decide that less is more \u2013 are we ******* the economy lethal blow?<\/p>\n * Answers:\u00a0 aligned, leading, dealing<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: Recently I wrote about the continuum of hope, fantasy and delusion within the context of playing the lottery.\u00a0 I realize now that I forgot to consider confidence, that extra added ingredient that can reset the continuum to the right or … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/american-sniper.jpg\" "\\"american")
<\/a> US military history, tallying 150 \u201cofficial\u201d kills, smashing the previous record of 109.\u00a0 He cheerfully describes kill after kill, and proudly notes that he is so accurate in nailing the target \u201cT zone (i.e. head and neck) that the insurgents \u201cdie before they hit the ground, and feel no pain.\u201d\u00a0 He may be a killing machine, but I have minimal confidence that the stifling military bureaucracy has put him on the correct rooftop, or behind the correct bush.\u00a0 Similarly, I have total confidence that US SEAL Team 6 can successfully storm a compound in Abottabod, Pakistan, but more limited confidence that the CIA identified the right house – after all the whole weapons of mass destruction thing in Iraq was a total TARFU (t<\/strong>otally a<\/strong>nd r<\/strong>oyally f<\/strong>***** u<\/strong>p).\u00a0 So it was great relief to learn that we dodged a BOHICA (b<\/strong>end o<\/strong>ver, h<\/strong>ere i<\/strong>t c<\/strong>omes a<\/strong>gain) moment when Osama bin Laden was indeed inside and swiftly disposed of.<\/p>\n<\/a>number that is then compared to a number from the previous month.\u00a0 While consumer confidence may help set the government\u2019s economic policy, a positive number can go viral.\u00a0 A news report of improving confidence might just boost my confidence \u2013 motivating me to buy an extra pint of raspberries at the farmer\u2019s market and not care if they go moldy, and then I may bump into a neighbor at the market who finally bought that hybrid she wanted when she landed a better job, and her confidence might encourage me to buy a scooter so that I can go to the farmer\u2019s market and buy a baguette and feel very French, and just maybe, if my animal spirits are particularly restless, I might go to France itself.\u00a0 The trickle down effect of confidence.\u00a0\u00a0 But then there is the issue of our rusty old mailbox.\u00a0 In a childish display of petulance, we refuse to replace it primarily to annoy our very fussy and demanding neighbors whose gleaming wrought iron mailbox contrasts with our raggedy and rickety one.\u00a0 Visually, we may be bringing our neighborhood down.\u00a0 But I wonder if the neighbors think that budget constraints are the reason we have not upgraded our mailbox.\u00a0 Is our childish behavior subtly undermining our neighborhood\u2019s consumer confidence?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for answers.<\/em><\/h6>\n
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