Scott Bremner

Confidence can be as fickle and fleeting as a summer romance, as delicate and ethereal as fairy wings, as tough to grab onto and hold as a hummingbird in full flight.

Athletes can spend weeks in a confidence slump only to suddenly knock down every shot or hit every ball.

Sometimes it comes without rhyme or reason; you just know deep down that you’re the right person for the situation.

Sometimes it disappears in an instant, a world of potential suddenly washed away in a flood of self doubt.

Sometimes, in all that is real or perceived between Heaven and Hell, the hardest thing to believe in is the person in the mirror.

And yet it is on this, the thinnest of materials, this briefest puff of wind, in which we place the future of our fortunes; it is the one real lynch pin that if pulled could collapse the greatest economy on Earth.

You see, the real gauge of the strength of our financial institutions is the measure of just how much confidence we have in ourselves.

As I write this the Dow is dropping more than 730 points, the second largest loss of American wealth and confidence in history, second only to the 777 point free fall of September 29th.

In between, the economy rebounded 900 points, a bungee jump sure to make all but the sturdiest of investors queasy.

A series of reports forecasting that we wouldn’t spend money caused us to lose a good chunk of what we had left, one of a number of self fulfilling prophesies that help guarantee that dire predictions will lead to dire results in an already jittery marketplace.

Yes, banks have to start lending some of the hundreds of millions given them by all of us.

Yes, more oversights need to be in place to provide accountability to those running key cogs in our economic machine.

Yes, fraudulent or greedy mortgage operations have to be addressed.

But most importantly, we have to find the strength to believe in ourselves, to invest when others run away, to stay a course that appears to be headed over the nearest cliff.

Having the courage to find that kind of confidence in the world in which we now live, may be the hardest trick of all.