Quick - deck the halls and ring out the old year. We are headed into a new year that has the gloom merchants positively salivating, and we need to enjoy even the fleeting last moments of the old.

Bad economic times are undoubtedly coming. They may not be quite as bad as advertised, or are we entitled to raise even a single flicker of hope?

Gas and oil prices are at record lows for instance, while it has never been cheaper to borrow money. And house prices are falling as well.

You can fly almost anywhere in the world less expensively than you did even a few months ago. Stores are giving bargains unseen since the Great Depression.

But we live in a media culture that celebrates hard times because the more gloom and doom that can be spread, the better the rating apparently.

But what if all this media is hype is similar to the way they play up every passing snow shower as a major catastrophe in the making?

What if Wall Street has fallen as far as it will, to around the 8,500 mark?

After all, that was the mark it was at in 2002. Does that year particularly stand out as a disastrous one?

It can all become a self-fulfilling prophecy of course, but here is one editorial that will refuse to be pessimistic about 2009.

We will start the year brightly with the inauguration of the first ever black president. It is an incredible achievement, one the country can be rightly proud of.

President-elect Barack Obama has promised to tackle the hard times head on and to provide the leadership so noticeably lacking in the departing incumbent George W. Bush.

That may well count for a lot in a country starving of leadership since the Iraq war went wrong. Obama has also picked a deeply knowledgeable and proficient team, which will surely help us extract ourselves from the current malaise.

So don't let the naysayers get you down. Yes, there will be a struggle in 2009, but it may not be anything as hard as the "experts" make out.

It may not be the worst thing in the world if we have to trim our sails a bit and become more community focused as we seek ways to work together through these times.

The good news is that the mad and selfish days are over and people have come back down to earth. A reality check isn't the worst thing sometimes.

Here at Irish Voice and Irish America magazine, we are starting a new business in 2009, named Irishcentral.com, which will be the portal to the Irish worldwide, but more particularly here in Irish America that has long been talked about.

In a way we are making our own bet on the American economy and the power of the Irish diaspora in America and around the globe.

We started the Irish Voice just after the 1987 stock market crash and the paper did very well despite that, so we are hoping for lightning to strike twice.

So look for Irishcentral.com around mid March 2009. Hopefully you will not be disappointed.

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our readers.