Comments on: Uh-Oh: Economists Say Recovery, Market Gains Solid

By: philipat

philipat — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:45:00 +0000

A combination of a survey of economists AND USA Today (aka nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intlligence of the vaerage American). Run for the hills.

By: Mannwich

Mannwich — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:22:58 +0000

@rc: Equating one’s smarts to how much money they’ve made is part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in. It’s cultural rot. Priorities all out of whack.

By: ashpelham2

ashpelham2 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:19:29 +0000

There really is a big game of high stakes gambling going on right now in investment normalities. What we’ve become used to seeing is the market correct in october, as history has shown. Didn’t happen. Not to the extent we expected anyways.

I finally stumbled upon the secret to life yesterday evening, whilst watching the local news folks talking about our college football teams: the market is not for the Boise State’s and TCU’s of the world. Rather, it’s for the Texas, Florida, and Alabama’s of the world. All the rest of us might have a fine year every now and then, but we won’t touch those big dogs. Too big of a lead. IT STILL TAKES MONEY TO MAKE MONEY.

By: rootless_cosmopolitan

rootless_cosmopolitan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:04:44 +0000

Mannwich,

I didn’t even mention that one also would have to assume that understanding well how the economy works can be translated into predictions with respect to specific investments, at least. What if the system isn’t really predictable by its structure due to its inert non-linearities (deterministic chaos etc.), so that any specific investment is a gamble by its nature? Even the smartest economist couldn’t do anything about this, except gambling, maybe supported by probabilities derived from the past, and hoping it works out well.

By: DonRobbie

DonRobbie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:40:55 +0000

The sad thing is even this crazy optimistic projection isn’t as rosy as the one the Administration is using for its budget projections.

By: Mannwich

Mannwich — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:40:31 +0000

@rc: You saved me the time and energy of basically saying the same thing. I was going to reply earlier but can’t muster too much energy to do so (or post much of anything) this morning.

By: Recession Over????? | stream4.me

Recession Over????? | stream4.me — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:38:43 +0000

[...] now saying that the recession is over and happy times are here again…….Lots of links, HERE Meanwhile the number of failing banks soar to all time highs with no end in sight. [...]

By: jc

jc — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:38:08 +0000

I did a quick check of the 9 banks, there was one A+(WTF?) and one C, the rest were Fs

As of last Q about 1900 of the 6000 small enough to fails were rated F. If “they” are right about the commercial tsunami for these banks there won’t be enough days in the week to spread the failures to keep the number below alarming.

These 6000 banks need to merge into just a couple banks to become TBTF survivors. How about Bank AtoM of America and NtoZ National Bank?

CITI is graded F and BAC and WFC are both Bs. CITI is going to cost the US a lot of money with those 300B of guarantees

By: rootless_cosmopolitan

rootless_cosmopolitan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:37:54 +0000

“Does anyone know a billionaire economist?

If economists were so smart, they would be some of the richest people in the world.”

This is about as dumb as to say, “if physicists were so smart, they would be able to fly”. Are the richest people in the world also the smartest people in the world? I very much doubt that. And there isn’t any necessary relationship between studying and understanding well how the economy works as a whole and success with founding and managing a business or with investing. These are very different things that require different skill sets, in addition to that factors like luck and opportunity also play a big role for latter one and that there is a limited time budget. How could any economist who seriously works in his profession and uses his intelligence and spends his time for his studies become one of the richest people in the world?

By: Bruce in Tn

Bruce in Tn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:28:18 +0000

By the way, the only way I passed high school typinng was because the teacher admired my steady and didn’t want to fail me because of her….so if you see “amonst” you must translate that to “amongst”….