Everybody knows the markets and economy would be fine if we didn't have newspapers and TV stations blabbing about them all the time. Shut down those independent reporting sources, the way they used to do in Soviet Russia, and nobody will be wiser. The only things between us and Dow 36,000 are the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Jim Cramer. (We're all making up the housing crisis because we want America to fail.)

Hedge fund manager Barry Ritholtz dares to question this truth. He links to three decades of bad-news TIME magazine covers and audaciously claims that the stories were based on reality at the time and that the economy eventually recovered and thrived, traitorous media notwithstanding.

The market makes the news — not the other way around.

Far too many investors fail to understand that. When the news is very negative, its usually AFTER the market has been deeply whacked. They are reporting what has already occurred; That’s their jobs.

My goal here isn’t to bash the Press (that stuff is silly). Rather, it is to show you that the media is not telling you what is most probably going to happen next. To investors, news mostly old — its pretty much history as far as sock prices are concerned. What matters most to your portfolio is what the near future holds.

As an example, consider this collection of Time Magazine covers.