BALTIMORE (Map, News) - I’m sure you are worried about the economy.

You have no choice. You are being told to worry about it every single day. Good news. Bad news. Mediocre news. It doesn’t matter. All economic news is bad.

America wasn’t always that way. World War II brought us the idea that “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The 1970s brought a similar tune with Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Heck, if you don’t fear death, you aren’t afraid of anybody.

Those days are long gone. Now we’re all about fear. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson coined the term “fear and loathing” in the early 1970s. Now it’s fear and self-loathing. We are afraid of everything and we hate ourselves for it.

Global warming? We’re afraid. Time magazine told us “Be Worried, Be Very Worried” back in 2006. We are. It doesn’t accomplish anything. But we do as we’re told.

Terrorism? We have a whole color-coded system for fear. We’re also supposed to keep our duct tape and plastic handy to fend off a dirty bomb attack. I live near Home Depot. I am safe.

Recession? Well, we must be in one — maybe a full-fledged depression.

What a stunningly ridiculous claim. Oh, I see it a lot, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. Brian Billick gets called an offensive genius a lot as well. Bimbo could run better plays.

Let’s bury the ongoing claims of a Great Depression. (You know it’s bad because it’s got two capital letters. Like General Assembly, only a bit worse.) The Great Depression was a once-in-a-century event — a global economic meltdown. Unemployment hit 25 percent.

Today’s unemployment rate is 4.7 percent. We’ve had 50 months straight of positive job growth. That’s 8.3 million new jobs since August 2003. And the latest economic numbers show gross domestic product grew at a strong 4.9 percent in the most recent quarter.

How horrible. How dare President Bush actually do well at something, even if the networks don’t acknowledge it?

Sure there are concerns. Housing has been a worry since before Sept. 11, with some calling for a housing cataclysm like the Internet stock bubble — so far, no dice. According to an S&P/Case-Shiller study, the national average home price is up 80 percent since 2000. Unless you bought recently and overpaid, you are still profiting.

Worried about holiday sales? Even dour predictions call for a 4 percent increase this year. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales outdid that already.

No one would ever accuse me of being an optimist. Journalists are supposed to look at the glass half empty — even on a good day. But the economy is too complex for that. Even the smartest people disagree about most every economic measure we use.

There are reasons for caution. There always are. But fear makes us act foolish and look foolish.

To quote one of the great minds of our time, Mad magazine cover boy Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry?”

Dan Gainor can be seen each week on Thursday afternoons on the new Fox Business Network. He is the T. Boone Pickens free market fellow at the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator. He can be reached at gainorcolumn@gmail.com.