Ernie : You said -- To be sure, I do agree that there *were* valid warning signs that were deliberately ignored. I just don't know if the signal to noise was very high, and thus whether the crime was ignoring a strong signal or failing to pay sufficient attention to a weak one. This has been the problem with the whole field of Futures Research / futuristics from day # 1 when the futures biz got started back in the late 60s. In effect forecasters were, despite their best efforts, never able to send more than weak signals. Why pay attention when they are wrong at serious rates ? Still, the fact is that some of the forecasters got things right far more often than not. But they were ignored too, or usually ignored. Problem in that case is the "Cassandra effect." A prophet or prophetess does know the future but is not believed. Lotsa reasons why, such as investment in preferred outcomes, false pride, "educational" shortcomings ( not being aware of enough information to make a good judgement ), etc. and as you put it, "noise" that drowns out good sense. One suggestion that was never acted upon, or no better than a pilot study, was for creation of a forecasters "batting average" service to track forecasts and list %s for all name forecasters, year by year. I think, but cannot say for sure, that this never got far because of opposition from entrenched futures think tanks who, if wrong didn't want the world to know, therefore could be free to trumpet their correct forecasts as if that was the whole story. Maybe some other reasons this excellent idea never got anywhere, but the fact is that it didn't. But that is what we all need. Obviously it would be a huge help in the financial sector. Or does anyone know of some kind of tracking service which covers finance ? I mean a "good" service, not just one that looks at selected results -which, clearly, can be skewed any which way. A batting average service would amplify weak signals into strong ones that could not be ignored. Billy ==================================================== In a message dated 4/7/2010 1:16:19 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
HI Billy, Overall a probably fair indictment, but it did raise a question I've wondered about: On Apr 7, 2010, at 12:57 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: He gave political support to the Bush tax cut in 2001 because -- get this -- unless the government reduced taxes, there would be no more _Treasuries_ (http://www.usdebtclock.org/) for the Fed to buy to conduct monetary policy! He refused to raise _margin_ (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=MARGDEBT:IND) requirements in the late 1990s to defuse the _technology stock bubble_ (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=CCMP:IND) , arguing publicly it would have no effect. (Privately, he acknowledged it would curtail the bubble but might nail the economy in the process.) It certainly is true we could have avoided this whole bubble by clamping down on big banks and irrational lending. BUT.... would that have just caused a similar economic crash earlier? I think you can make a case that an earlier crash would have been a "normal" recession, versus a Great Depression. And that Wall Street wouldn't have made trillions during those intervening years, and thus require plus-sized bailouts. But, I don't know anyone who's even asking that question. In other words, was it really possible to have brought the economy in for a soft landing, or was as crash like this more-or-less inevitable, and the best we could have done is to deliberately precipitate it? If the latter is the case, then I have a bit more sympathy for politicos who've blinked. Of course, if there was a way to have stopped the excesses *before* they became a structural problem, then that would've been much better. But how early would that intervention had to have taken place -- 2001? 2005? And did anyone *else* see the problem way back then? That's the one caveat I have with all those (admittedly much-deserved!) blame-flinging. Would the earlier cure have been as painful as our current disease, when would it have to have been implemented, and who truly knew back then? To be sure, I do agree that there *were* valid warning signs that were deliberately ignored. I just don't know if the signal to noise was very high, and thus whether the crime was ignoring a strong signal or failing to pay sufficient attention to a weak one. Which is an important distinction if one is trying to redesign the system as a whole to behave better, rather than just vilifying individuals. Ernie P. -- Ernie P. = _______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected] http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
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