Been beat up and battered 'round,
Been sent up and been shot down.
Been sent up and been shot down.
— George Harrison
Dependency on a retirement nest egg has turned me into an obsessive market watcher.
That's not a healthy habit.
Unchecked, it induces stock market stress.
So my usual jitteriness wasn't helped a bit yesterday morning when economist Peter Berezin announced that, with Putin on the rampage, the odds of a "civilization-ending nuclear war" in the coming year have risen to 10 percent.
But not to worry, folks, Berezin said.
"Despite the rising risk of Armageddon, investors should stay bullish on stocks,” he told The New York Times.
The Times found the economist's prediction of increased earnings somewhat baffling.
"What I wasn’t trying to say," Berezin replied, "was that stocks were going to go up if there is a nuclear war. Obviously, they will go down.
"The point is that everything else will go down, too."
Somehow, I'm discomfited by Berezin's analysis.
Maybe it's my memories of all those duck-and-cover drills we practiced in grade school; those uncles with mildewed bomb shelters; or Walter Cronkite's live coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I don't know.
But the fact that the prices of all investment vehicles will fall when the world turns into a radioactive ash heap doesn't much ease this market watcher's jitters.
I was tempted to place a sell-everything order with my guy after reading Berezin's analysis, but I resisted the urge.
Instead, I ordered a box of Potassium Iodide on line and spent the rest of the morning painting a picture (my encore career).
The problem with a pronouncement like Berezin's isn't that it's wrong.
The problem is that, when it comes to Boomers, it's tone deaf.
Mr. Berezin—a Gen Xer—clearly doesn't grasp the fact that, as Cold War survivors, we Boomers have to be handled with the utmost care.
Sure, we thought annihilation went out with giant shoulder pads.
But a lot of us have PTSD.
Post Thermonuclear Shivers Disorder.
Easily.
So, please, handle us with care.
