If you sit around and worry all day long, you’d probably never leave your house.

The world is just too scary.

Danger is all around us.

You can’t drink the water — something might be in it.

You can’t even eat most food — it might be contaminated.

And you’d better not go outside; you might get bit by a West Nile-infected mosquito — or worse.

But the reality is that most situations in life are rarely as good or as bad as the extremes among us would indicate.

That lesson applies in most things, but we’re especially reminded of this as we consider the current national financial worries.

The biggest fear factor the nation’s economy faces is panic. Locally, our banks appear to be among the safest out there.

The housing market here is tight, but it’s not awful.

In fact, we’re fortunate that the effects of the financial worries that are hitting the national markets have either not been felt here at all or felt only in minor ways.

Local bankers, realtors and investment specialists are predicting that those effects will continue to be relatively minor here, particularly if we keep our head and eliminate panic from our psyche.

It’s quite likely that we’ll all tighten our belts a bit, but that doesn’t mean our economy is about to shut down.

The chances of that happening are about as slim as the chance that you’ll be poisoned by your food and contract West Nile all in the same day.