Australian CEOs gloomy about 2016 as world drowns in $200 trillion in debt
IMF revises down global growth projections
Why don't Australia's chief executives cheer up? 
If you think of Australia's economy as a schoolkid, sitting in a playground, she's one of the only ones with a near-to-full lunch box and wearable uniform. The other kids are in tattered clothes, and don't have much to eat.
Things aren't that simple obviously, but listening to our business leaders you'd think we were one of the poorest kids around with little to be hopeful about. 
They're not right.
A new survey of global and domestic business leaders overnight shows just one third of Australia's CEOs believe the economy will improve in 2016. 
It also found only one third are 'very confident' they will see revenue growth. And nearly 80 per cent see more risks today than they did three years ago.
How do they plan to respond to these fears? By cutting costs.
It's all so predictable, and potentially damaging. They'll run the risk of making things materially worse for everyone if they're that disconsolate.
Australia's economy has been one of the best-performing in the last 25 years, across everything from GDP growth, income growth, the unemployment rate, and inflation.
We haven't had a recession since late 1991.
It doesn't mean we'll automatically maintain those numbers, but it puts us in a far better position than other countries to deal with future economic shocks.
On the negative side, the world is facing an exceptional period of volatility over the next few years. China's economy is undergoing huge spasmodic growing pains that affect everyone. The US Federal Reserve has begun to raise interest rates. War in the Middle East has thrown millions of refugees across Europe's borders. Commodity prices are plummeting.
And the International Monetary Fund has just revised downwards its projections for global growth for 2016 and 2017, shaving 0.2 percentage points of the world's growth rate, which is worth billions of dollars of potential GDP.
The Turnbull government also recently revised downwards Australia's real GDP growth for 2015???16, from the budget forecast of 2.75 per cent to 2.5 per cent.
But it's no reason to be pessimistic just yet. The hardships facing Australia don't outweigh the positives. 
Our economy is growing at 2.5 per cent. 
Compare that to the IMF's projections for other countries. It thinks the UK economy will not grow by more than 2.2 per cent over the next two years. Canada's economy, which shares many characteristics with Australia's, is tipped to grow by just 1.7 per cent this year, and 2.1 per cent next year. Japan's barely growing at all.
In a world in which growth rates are being revised downwards across the board, Australia still looks pretty good.
Inflation is low, at 1.5 per cent. Our saving ratio remains higher than it did before the financial crisis, at around 9 per cent.
And the unemployment rate, although uncomfortably high at 5.8 per cent, is stubbornly lower than many thought it would be six months ago.
The official cash rate is 2 per cent, and the dollar has finally dropped to around US68c - which is something business has been crying for. Both those things should help counteract weaker capital spending in the mining sector.
Wages are also growing at their record slowest. 
Private sector wage growth, just 2.1 per cent for the year to   September, is the lowest it has been in 18 years. It's so low it's tracking the Reserve Bank's measure of underlying inflation, so the buying power of private sector wages has frozen. Public sector wages are growing marginally faster, at 2.7 per cent.
Theory says that should be encouraging employers to hire.
But the flipside of that, of course, is that workers know their take home pay is hardly growing. Our household budgets are consistently squeezed. And petrol prices are not falling as much as the wholesale price of fuel, a phenomenon that has exaggerated the cost of living for motorists.  
Consumer confidence has now begun to fall.
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens has said consistently the one thing missing in Australia is "animal spirits" - the human emotion that drives consumer and business confidence. 
Our chief executives ought to keep that in mind.