In a world fueled by social media stories of doom and gloom, celebrities, politicians, and the 30-second news cycle … has anything really changed in the past hundred years? When the “News of the World” was run by Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and later, Hearst, the conversations had to be the same as today. Those folks even installed their own President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.

I can hear the gossip of the day… those Such-n-Such did this and that. Now we have Cook, Trump, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Page running the world. (CEOs of Apple, USA, Amazon, Facebook, and Google’s parent, Alphabet). Same story, different times.

Similarly, Trump is out for business and economic growth of America, which does actually fuel the economies of the world, like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Cook is looking for privacy and making the world a safer, healthier, and nicer place. Zuckerberg is doing what he can to hold on to the “new world” place of connection. Realistically, he created a worldwide community of communication. As for Page, initially, he just wanted to replace the yellow pages. Index of all the world’s information is the result of their success.

So, now what? We ride along as we always do. For the teams of professionals at American RetirementAdvisors, we keep fighting for our clients and future clients. We fight against misinformation, archaic ways of thinking, and outright lies. We protect our clients from marketing campaigns that bend common sense. We protect folks from conversations with friends based on conjecture, half-truths, and wives’ tales. We seek to get FIRST-HAND information from the entities that actually make policy, rules, and affect change. (i.e., Securities and Exchange Commission, Government Accounting Office, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the like.)

The big picture for America is bright. The economy is sound. The markets are ready for correction and so are our clients. As we move into the season of winter solstice holidays, I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year.