Poll finds surprising optimists - BBC

Poll finds surprising optimists:
A BBC World Service poll finds a stark global divide between countries hopeful and downcast over their economic prospects.

Actually, I don't find the list of optimists all that surprising. Iraq and Afghanistan should be countries where their people are optimistic about the future, given that they were just recently freed from oppressive regimes and are now starting over. If you can't be optimistic then, when can you be?

What I find surprising is some of the pessimists. Take the US for example. Every report I have seen over the last few years has shown a steady improvement in almost very economic indicator. This is what you want. Not a booming economy, but a steadily growing, maintainable economy.

I wonder why the pessimism. Perhaps the administration has not done a good enough job getting its economic message out (I would agree with that). Perhaps we are so jaded that we need to see a booming (but completely false and irrational) economy like what we saw in the late 90's in order to be optimistic. Or perhaps we are just stupid, and use the price of gas as our only economic indicator...