Ever since the Tea Party Downgrade, the stock market has been a roller coaster of wild swings. Triple-digit ups and downs have become routine. And throughout, the media, and partisan politicians and pundits, have fretted over impending doom and the end of civilization.

So just to help us keep things in perspective…..

Neil Cavuto, and others on Fox News, have been relentlessly harping on every scrap of negative news they can find. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have been predicting London-style riots. But we should not buy into the Fox News pessimism.

The market is up more than 50%, and over 3,000 points, since Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. Corporations in many sectors of the economy are reporting record profits. Does that mean we shouldn’t be concerned about the recent gyrations. Of course not. We still have a serious deficiency of jobs and a severely unbalanced income gap. But at least we should recognize the reality of the big picture.

There is much to be hopeful about, and if Washington will do the right thing – i.e. invest in growth and job creation, and make the rich pay their fair share – we can prevail over hard times. To do that we must fight back against the obstructionism of the TeaPublicans whose only agenda is to enrich their wealthy, corporate contributors and defeat Democrats in 2012.