The pessimism is so thick you can cut it with a paper knife. Stocks are testing the lows of early summer. The second-quarter gross domestic product got a big downward revision Friday morning.

Yet I remain convinced we're not in a double-dip recession, and I think stocks should be accumulated at these levels. Here are my three reasons.

The first is gold. If the global economy was really heading toward another big leg down, we wouldn't see gold creeping back up to within a couple percentage points of its all-time high. (As loyal readers know, gold has been my "best-idea" investment for quite a while, so seeing it perform well is an end in itself for me. However, right now, I'm talking about what gold's rise implies for the rest of the world.)

Consider gold's performance when economic conditions were declining sharply in 2008, after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been put into receivership, Lehman Brothers had failed and AIG had to be rescued. Those events triggered a sudden and severe global recession. What did gold do? It fell like a rock, as did everything else.

Gold isn't the "safe haven" investment the world thinks it is. In a panic, only cash is safe enough. So when conditions get really bad, gold gets sold for cash the same way stocks get sold for cash. That's what happened in the autumn of 2008. Stocks and gold crashed at the same time.

Right now, stocks are in a serious correction after a large rally from the March 2009 lows. However, gold isn't falling with stocks. It's within spitting distance of a record high. That suggests there's no way we're headed back into the vortex of despair we saw in 2008.

Plenty of people expect another disaster. If you read much investment commentary on the web, you know how shrill the bears are now. Every little bit of news -- anything that could possibly be construed as less than positive -- is seen as horribly negative. Some of these pundits seem to be cheerleading for the end of the world, like it's something they want to happen. When I read this stuff, I feel like I'm at a NASCAR race sitting in a crowd that's hoping for a fiery collision on the track.

Yet nothing is crashing. The economy is limping along. Stocks are in a correction. The bears are braying like donkeys, but gold isn't cooperating. If the world were really coming apart, gold would be going down.

Now the bears see it as just the opposite. For them, gold going up is another sign of the end of the world. They insist that gold is rising because everyone is scared to hold anything else. However, again, it doesn't work that way. When people are really scared, they sell gold along with everything else.

Put another way, gold is sensitive to inflation expectations. If we were headed into another serious recession, we would expect deflation, putting pressure on gold. Gold's rise suggests that inflation expectations are alive and well -- and compared to expecting deflation, that's a good thing.

The second reason I remain optimistic about stocks is forward earnings. Day in and day out, the broad consensus of analysts keeps raising the earnings expected a year in the future. In fact, these forward earnings are being upgraded now at about a 25% annual rate. By historic standards, that's a fast pace.

Doubters point to the popular notion that securities analysts on Wall Street are perma-bulls and shills. That idea is an urban myth. According to my research, analysts are entirely capable of downgrading their forward earnings expectations. They don't do it often -- but then again, they don't have to do it often because earnings usually grow -- it's just a question of how much.

Of course, every once in a while earnings do fall. We call those times recessions. And my research and experience suggests that analysts, on average, are excellent at lowering their earnings forecasts in advance of recessions.

They did it perfectly in 2000 and 2007, effectively warning of two recessions months before they were obvious by other indicators -- and in plenty of time to sell stocks near their highs.

With stocks correcting as earnings estimates are rising, they are an attractive value proposition. It's that simple.

The third reason that gives me confidence has to do with the nature of the universe.

Certain things are true by construction -- simply by virtue of the way the world works. In order to have an expansion, you have to have had a recession. In order to have a recession, you need to have had an expansion. You can't rise from a top any more than you can fall from a bottom.

We are not at a top. We're closer to a bottom because we've had very little recovery since the worst of the recession ended a year ago. There's really nowhere to fall from here. I suppose we could drift a little lower, but it wouldn't surprise me at all just to sit here wallowing for long while.

However, the idea that we would go from here into something that really felt like a downturn strikes me as nearly physically impossible.

Oh, sure, I can think of things that could cause it. There could be an act of nuclear terrorism. An asteroid could strike the Earth. Those things would do it.

Or Fannie and Freddie and Lehman and AIG could go bankrupt. No, wait, that's already happened.

I don't feel great talking about buying stocks here because I can't make a great growth story, but I can make a good value story, including a chapter about how the world's not ending.

I tend to think that should be enough. When the alternative is buying 10-year Treasury bills yielding about 2.5%, the idea of even modest gains in stocks becomes reasonably attractive -- provided you agree with me that there isn't a huge downside.

So I'm not trying to say "rah rah rah" for stocks. How about I just say "rah?"