A Cure for the News Blues

December 5, 2025

Doug Leyendecker

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
– Warren Bennis

FAVORITE READS OF THE WEEK

Dell family donates $6.25B for “Trump Accounts”
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The Future of Journalism
Reconciling abundance with power.

THINKING OUT LOUD

A Cure for the News Blues
And maybe the country, too

A reader of this newsletter recently said to me, “I’m trying to limit my news intake these days to business news. The rest is pretty depressing.”

This reader has a point, but maybe there’s a solution. (Besides reading this newsletter?)

It is the “news” media’s existential imperative to addict viewers through nonstop drama to sell more ads, which makes the media-owners more money. Every good soap opera needs a villain, and the media has never had a better one than President Trump, from whom they create an endless stream of apocalyptic headlines.

Then there’s our massive and rapidly growing debt problem. Economic anxiety seems to strengthen its grip every day. Layoffs seem to be expanding. Inflation remains sticky. Healthcare costs are exploding. Ambiguity remains around tariffs.

Then we have technology companies hijacking our dopamine system to hijack our wallets and addict us to their “algorithmic drugs,” some of which are flooded with propaganda from overseas to sow social and political division. And then there’s AI—a technology we didn’t ask for and that was thrust upon us—looming threateningly over many of our jobs.

And what of the rest of the world? Hope of peace between Israel and Gaza may have left as quickly as it came. And what about Russia and Ukraine? And then there’s China, whose global ambitions worry many in the West.

All of this, on the heels of Covid, George Floyd, and all that both wrought. The cultural and economic fallout of those events persist to this day.

No wonder the reader who inspired these thoughts is emotionally exhausted from the news. Most of us likely are, too.

So what’s the solution?

Many believe we must grant the government more power and latitude in taking steps to improve people’s lives. History is littered with examples that show more government control over our lives usually means more despair.

Maybe the real trick is for every one of us to wake up each day with the goal to do our part, however small, to make our worlds better by making someone else’s world better. That’s right. Spending more of our time helping others have a better world may be the best strategy to turn our world around. Imagine if more and more people made this a daily aim.

We don’t need an ever bigger government to take care of us. Instead, we should focus on taking care of ourselves and each other better. It starts with family, then friends and neighbors, then anyone else we “touch” in our daily lives. And it doesn’t have to be grand gestures. It can be as little as saying “thank you” and “have a great day” more often and with real sincerity behind it.

It all starts with that person you see in the mirror each morning when you brush your teeth. Paying it forward has never been as important than it is today. And it really doesn’t take much effort to produce great results. We can turn the world around without big government. We just have to take more personal responsibility in doing so.

THE RANDOMS

The debate over Trump’s attacks on drug-running boats seems to boil down to whether we consider these drug runners as narco-terrorists seeking to destroy American lives. If so, then are they not our enemy? What other war on drugs strategies have worked in the past?

Ponder this when considering how to deal with terrorists: Since terrorists’ stock-in-trade is to stoke fear in their target, then to defeat them, don’t we have to make them more afraid of us than we are of them? Unfortunately, this would mean lowering ourselves to their level, which is a challenge in our Western, Christian, turn-the-other-cheek value system. But if we don’t challenge terrorists on their own turf, with their own strategies, then won’t the West be dealing with terror forever?

Is it realistic to think the various Muslim nations committed to the Gaza peace force will actually collaborate and cooperate?

No hurricanes hit the US this season, proving that climate change is real.

From Quan Gang, President of Roborock, a Chinese robot maker: “In China, we have a very comprehensive supply chain, which helps make design and production very easy, competent and efficient.” Take note, American politicians: “We have a very comprehensive supply chain.”

If you are worried about our $38 trillion in rapidly growing debt, you might not want to think about how much of the $4+ trillion in student loans will be defaulted on.

The tribe or the individual, which is more important?

ECONOMIC NEWS

Economy

Sprawling industrial parks coming to US
Auto deals are here for a while
The pizza economic indicator
Black Friday sales rise
Preppers will save us when the internet collapses

Labor

Are billable hours over in professional services?
Private employers cut jobs
How badly will AI hurt management consulting?
Manufacturing employment keeps falling
But there’s a gold rush for construction workers

Health Care

The US health care cost explosion
The 5 eras of brain life
Non-profit hospitals are scamming the system

The Lone Star

Dell family donates $6.25B for “Trump Accounts”
San Antonio to host inaugural Texas space summit
Austin company introduces firefighting drones

BUSINESS

Finance