It is a truly remarkable era for the professionally dense. For years, we have been told by the high priests of the dismal science—those charming ghouls we call economists—that if we simply looked at the 'fundamentals,' we would realize that our collective suffering is merely a statistical anomaly. The spreadsheets are green, the unemployment figures are 'historically low,' and the stock market is doing its customary impression of a helium balloon tied to a rocket ship. And yet, the human cattle refuse to moo with joy. The latest 'crisis,' according to the weeping elite, isn't a lack of resources or a failure of distribution; it is, quite simply, that we are all too 'gloomy.' Welcome to the era where the 'vibes' have finally overmastered the 'math.' It turns out that when you spend four decades telling the working class that their stagnation is actually 'flexibility' and their debt is actually 'opportunity,' they eventually stop believing the glossy brochures. The news that pessimism is the world’s main economic problem is the ultimate admission of defeat from the technocratic class. It is the sound of a used car salesman screaming at a customer for noticing the engine is missing. They’ve run out of tricks, so they’ve decided to blame the audience for not clapping hard enough. On the Left, we have the usual parade of performative hand-wringing. They’ll tweet their 'existential dread' from a device powered by a lithium mine that looks like a circle of hell, complaining that the system is broken while simultaneously demanding that the same system provide them with more subsidized comfort. They mistake their consumerist anxiety for a revolutionary soul. On the Right, the response is even more brain-dead. They look at a world choking on its own excess and decide the real problem is that a cartoon candy bar isn't sexy enough anymore or that some middle-manager in HR used a pronoun they didn't like. Both sides are staring at a sinking ship and arguing about the color of the lifeboats, while the economists stand on the bridge screaming that the water is actually quite refreshing if you just adopt a growth-oriented mindset. The fundamental disconnect is that 'data' has become a form of gaslighting. When the GDP grows, it doesn’t mean the average person can afford a home; it means a handful of data points in Silicon Valley and Wall Street have moved further into the realm of science fiction. The 'pessimism' that the elites are so worried about is actually the first sign of sanity humanity has shown in a century. It is the realization that the 'robust' economy is a vampire that requires constant infusions of optimism to keep its skin from peeling off. If the peasants stop believing in the magic of the market, the market ceases to exist. It’s a collective hallucination, and the drugs are starting to wear off. Historical parallels are, of course, lost on a public with the attention span of a goldfish in a blender. We’ve seen this before. Every dying empire spends its final days insisting that the 'fundamentals are strong' while the borders crumble and the currency becomes better suited for wallpaper. But this time, it’s global. There is no 'elsewhere' to flee to. We are all trapped in a giant shopping mall that is slowly filling with carbon monoxide, and the management is frustrated that we aren’t spending enough money on new shoes. The 'gloomy expectations' the analysts fear are not a 'problem' to be solved; they are a rational response to a terminal diagnosis. To tell a man whose house is on fire that his heart rate is 'excellent' is not medical advice; it is a taunt. Yet, this is the sum total of modern economic discourse. We are told to ignore the smell of smoke and focus on the 'low unemployment' of the firefighting crew that is currently busy roasting marshmallows over our ruins. Ultimately, the world is not suffering from a lack of confidence. It is suffering from a surfeit of reality. The data says the party is still going, but the guests have noticed the hosts are looting the jewelry boxes and the caterers are serving sawdust. Pessimism is the only honest market signal left in a world built on lies. And as the 'vibecession' deepens, the only thing more pathetic than the state of the world is the fact that we’re expected to feel bad about feeling bad. If you aren't pessimistic, you aren't paying attention. And if you are paying attention, you know that no amount of 'positive expectations' can fix a system that was designed to consume itself. Sit back, pour a drink, and watch the spreadsheets burn. It’s the only truly productive thing left to do.