Monday, January 16, 2012

Do you trust “economists?”

By now, you probably know that I don't trust politicians and have them all in very, very low esteem. The category that comes close to them in mediocrity are economists, all trained by prestigious schools and professors who seem to know far less than what they infer.

Consider some recently released transcripts of Fed meetings when Ben Bernanke began his first year as new chairman. Even though he was the only one, among Fed officials to express the most concern about housing, he didn't think it was cause for alarm.

When Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006, he stated that the nation’s economy could pull off a “soft landing” from falling home prices. It took him another three months to begin grasping that, he and his colleagues, had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy. This is a striking example among many.

The list could go on and I don't even want to go into his predecessor's “expertise,” Mr. Greenspan. Most economists don't get it and if you want to make your own good predictions, simply rely on that seldom-used resource we all have inside us, called common sense. Then tell all these economists to become... politicians. They all might stand out like heroes inside this dismal field!

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