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Views of Economic "Experts"

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code1211

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I was just watching a TV News Show with various economic experts bemoaning the fact the the economy has REALLY, REALLY slowed down.

They all agreed that the economy has never slowed down this much, this fast- never, no way, no how! They all seem to be in agreement that the slow down will not end. We'll never be "normal" again.

It struck me that they were similar to a group of sports "experts" all discussing the offense of their local college football team and comparing the points scored in April so far to the points scored last November.

Solemnly, they all notice that the points scored in April are down. WAY DOWN! They've never seen a fall-off like this one. Our team, they note, hasn't scored a single point in any week this month. In November they scored every week!

What they fail to mention is the one critical point central to the discussion:

THERE ARE NO GAMES SCHEDULED IN APRIL. THE TEAM WAS TOLD TO STAY HOME. THERE ARE NO GAMES PLAYED. POINTS CAN'T BE SCORED.

Are they really not aware of the elephant sitting on their chest? Amazing! They don't see it, feel it or smell it.

Economists gleefully say doom. They all predict it and, like a broken clock are exactly right sometimes, about two seconds daily out of 86,000, but the occurrences are rare and useless.

Still, they seem to love the sound of each others' voices and the ongoing agreement that they share voicing poorly reasoned pessimism for a future of unremitting, oppressive ruin and poverty.

In the meantime, those with any sense are buying stocks and are already realizing big gains. Seriously, what's wrong with these guys?
 
code1211 said:
I was just watching a TV News Show with various economic experts bemoaning the fact the the economy has REALLY, REALLY slowed down.

They all agreed that the economy has never slowed down this much, this fast- never, no way, no how! They all seem to be in agreement that the slow down will not end. We'll never be "normal" again.

It struck me that they were similar to a group of sports "experts" all discussing the offense of their local college football team and comparing the points scored in April so far to the points scored last November.

Solemnly, they all notice that the points scored in April are down. WAY DOWN! They've never seen a fall-off like this one. Our team, they note, hasn't scored a single point in any week this month. In November they scored every week!

What they fail to mention is the one critical point central to the discussion:

THERE ARE NO GAMES SCHEDULED IN APRIL. THE TEAM WAS TOLD TO STAY HOME. THERE ARE NO GAMES PLAYED. POINTS CAN'T BE SCORED.

Are they really not aware of the elephant sitting on their chest? Amazing! They don't see it, feel it or smell it.

Economists gleefully say doom. They all predict it and, like a broken clock are exactly right sometimes, about two seconds daily out of 86,000, but the occurrences are rare and useless.

Still, they seem to love the sound of each others' voices and the ongoing agreement that they share voicing poorly reasoned pessimism for a future of unremitting, oppressive ruin and poverty.

In the meantime, those with any sense are buying stocks and are already realizing big gains. Seriously, what's wrong with these guys?
Click to expand...

The stock market doesn't always reflect the state of the economy. When the pandemic was getting started, stocks went down because people were consuming less and because some sold their stocks because they felt the need for hard cash. Then when the stock market was down, others saw an opportunity and bought shares (because let's face it, the current pandemic won't last forever and when it ends, the market will be back at its original level). The problem is that it's fair to assume that a few small businesses were forced to close their doors due to a lack of revenue. Bigger businesses can weather a storm like this because of their large revenue (and because they're the ones who got the stimulus packages) but small businesses may shut down. Furthermore, renters living paycheck to paycheck may get evicted and end up homeless after losing their jobs.
 
Why is this in the government regulation area of the forums? What is the OP looking to have done here?
 
Masterhawk said:
The stock market doesn't always reflect the state of the economy. When the pandemic was getting started, stocks went down because people were consuming less and because some sold their stocks because they felt the need for hard cash. Then when the stock market was down, others saw an opportunity and bought shares (because let's face it, the current pandemic won't last forever and when it ends, the market will be back at its original level). The problem is that it's fair to assume that a few small businesses were forced to close their doors due to a lack of revenue. Bigger businesses can weather a storm like this because of their large revenue (and because they're the ones who got the stimulus packages) but small businesses may shut down. Furthermore, renters living paycheck to paycheck may get evicted and end up homeless after losing their jobs.
Click to expand...

The Stock market(s) almost never reflects the economy. The stock market(s) is a forward looking indicator. All it does is reveal what the folks risking their own hard cash FEEL might happen in the future.

The discussion I heard was, to me, ridiculous. I tried to relay this. Television economists in general are silly. Paul Krugman, in particular, is farcical.

They are charged with filling minutes using content and they have to say something or they don't get paid for long.

I purchased 4 different sets of stocks since the middle of March. They've all been up a little and are now sitting at about a 30% rise from the original seed money.

I expect that the money will about double before the Christmas time frame.

If the President is re-elected, I'll probably let it ride. I'll spend November 3 with "my finger on the button" if I haven't dumped them before.

We'll see.

Regarding the rest of the economy, much has changed since mid April.

It seems like there are a whole bunch of businesses, even those not burned out in the riots, that just shuttered because cash flow ended.

Further, it seems like there might be a political component to the logic driving the shut downs. I suppose we'll see.

Around here, Indianapolis, we have been told that wearing a mask is critical to individual and community health. SO WE NEED TO START WEARING MASKS IN ABOUT A WEEK. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
 
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The stock market has almost bugger all to do with the real economy.
That's why you had a record stock market in the same week 20 million people became unemployed.
Very few Americans own stock and those that don't mostly don't have the disposable income to put into what may or may not be a risky stock purchase.
 
The way I understand it, stocks are valued by their potential future earnings. Right now they're being traded on pollyannish predictions that will all change by Sept when renters start getting evicted and unemployment benefits begin to run out unless Congress extends them.

There's going to be some seriously bad numbers coming in a few months on profit & loss statements, sales, jobs, GDP, quarterly reports, etc.
 
code1211 said:
I was just watching a TV News Show with various economic experts bemoaning the fact the the economy has REALLY, REALLY slowed down.

They all agreed that the economy has never slowed down this much, this fast- never, no way, no how! They all seem to be in agreement that the slow down will not end. We'll never be "normal" again.

It struck me that they were similar to a group of sports "experts" all discussing the offense of their local college football team and comparing the points scored in April so far to the points scored last November.

Solemnly, they all notice that the points scored in April are down. WAY DOWN! They've never seen a fall-off like this one. Our team, they note, hasn't scored a single point in any week this month. In November they scored every week!

What they fail to mention is the one critical point central to the discussion:

THERE ARE NO GAMES SCHEDULED IN APRIL. THE TEAM WAS TOLD TO STAY HOME. THERE ARE NO GAMES PLAYED. POINTS CAN'T BE SCORED.

Are they really not aware of the elephant sitting on their chest? Amazing! They don't see it, feel it or smell it.

Economists gleefully say doom. They all predict it and, like a broken clock are exactly right sometimes, about two seconds daily out of 86,000, but the occurrences are rare and useless.

Still, they seem to love the sound of each others' voices and the ongoing agreement that they share voicing poorly reasoned pessimism for a future of unremitting, oppressive ruin and poverty.

In the meantime, those with any sense are buying stocks and are already realizing big gains. Seriously, what's wrong with these guys?
Click to expand...

economists exist to make weather forecasters look good. And economists have great 20-20 hindsight. Like Nostradamus, they make dozens of forecasts and are bound to be right once; then that one success is their claim to fame ever after. It puts them in the "expert" category. In addition, they often have a solid grasp of the obvious. Who'd a thunk giving $300K mortgages to people making near minimum wage would become a problem? That one just gobsmacked almost all those "experts".
 
Waddy said:
economists exist to make weather forecasters look good. And economists have great 20-20 hindsight. Like Nostradamus, they make dozens of forecasts and are bound to be right once; then that one success is their claim to fame ever after. It puts them in the "expert" category. In addition, they often have a solid grasp of the obvious. Who'd a thunk giving $300K mortgages to people making near minimum wage would become a problem? That one just gobsmacked almost all those "experts".
Click to expand...

Economists are ridiculous. Guys like Paul Krugman have to know that they are idiots.

You're absolutely right about economists!

The same jack wagons that somberly pointed out that Sub-Prime Lending was used by the banks to collapse the economy then demanded that Sub-Prime lending was needed to eliminate racism.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

We need a little more education in our media and a little less propaganda.
 
code1211 said:
Economists are ridiculous. Guys like Paul Krugman have to know that they are idiots.

You're absolutely right about economists!

The same jack wagons that somberly pointed out that Sub-Prime Lending was used by the banks to collapse the economy then demanded that Sub-Prime lending was needed to eliminate racism.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

We need a little more education in our media and a little less propaganda.
Click to expand...

When I was a young man doing construction I worked alongside an older man who never even finished high school. But he was smarter about money than anyone I've ever known. In short my wife and I followed his advice (ie. don't buy a new truck unless the old one is worn out; then fix the old one instead) and my wife retired at age 50 and myself at age 60. He told me about ROTH IRA's, and how to buy stocks direct from a company without going through a broker (and paying a fee). Some people just understand money. He was one of them. He was also damn good at his job.
 
Waddy said:
When I was a young man doing construction I worked alongside an older man who never even finished high school. But he was smarter about money than anyone I've ever known. In short my wife and I followed his advice (ie. don't buy a new truck unless the old one is worn out; then fix the old one instead) and my wife retired at age 50 and myself at age 60. He told me about ROTH IRA's, and how to buy stocks direct from a company without going through a broker (and paying a fee). Some people just understand money. He was one of them. He was also damn good at his job.
Click to expand...

I ran into a similar kind of guy working on a farm. He was a master cabinet maker with dyslexia who could not read numbers, but could remember them and create complex cabinet designs to install in the kitchens of "Rich People".

I don't think that he understood that he was rich. To him, I think, rich people were not defined by what they possessed. They were defined by their desire to make others envious.

He could not reliably read numbers or words on a page, but he could see the future. He made his fist Million when he leveraged every penny he had to buy a swamp.

With back breaking work and a little help from his friends working "in the trades", he cleaned up the swamp and built homes around the shore line. He bought a swamp and sold lake homes. That would have been in the 50's.

When I knew him, he was a guy that looked for all the world like a bit of a dimwit. Dressed pretty plain and owned the little town nearby and most of the buildings in it. Absolutely unassuming.

Unlike you, I didn't understand the lessons he was teaching until years later. You can't fix stupid, but, with a little practice, I've learned to work around it and still come out okay. ;)
 
This shutdown did not happen because of reduced demand. It happened in spite of it. But the demand is still there.

Once a vaccine is found, the economy will come roaring back.
 
Waddy said:
economists exist to make weather forecasters look good. And economists have great 20-20 hindsight. Like Nostradamus, they make dozens of forecasts and are bound to be right once; then that one success is their claim to fame ever after. It puts them in the "expert" category. In addition, they often have a solid grasp of the obvious. Who'd a thunk giving $300K mortgages to people making near minimum wage would become a problem? That one just gobsmacked almost all those "experts".
Click to expand...

It wasn't the mortgage bubble gobsmacking the "experts" that was the problem - it gobsmacked the "free market" banks, lenders, bond market, stock market, and all the rest of the economy running on borrowed money backed by air. Don't blame economists for that. It was the free market that made all those loans, and the free market that bought AAA rated dog **** peddled by the best and brightest, paid $millions, all over the globe.
 
code1211 said:
Economists are ridiculous. Guys like Paul Krugman have to know that they are idiots.

You're absolutely right about economists!

The same jack wagons that somberly pointed out that Sub-Prime Lending was used by the banks to collapse the economy then demanded that Sub-Prime lending was needed to eliminate racism.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

We need a little more education in our media and a little less propaganda.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd watch that. Throwing rocks in your glass house might not end well for you....
 
JasperL said:
It wasn't the mortgage bubble gobsmacking the "experts" that was the problem - it gobsmacked the "free market" banks, lenders, bond market, stock market, and all the rest of the economy running on borrowed money backed by air. Don't blame economists for that. It was the free market that made all those loans, and the free market that bought AAA rated dog **** peddled by the best and brightest, paid $millions, all over the globe.
Click to expand...

economists weren't driving the train but they didn't see it coming, either. The bankers knew exactly what they were doing; and they knew the taxpayer would take the fall for them.
 
JasperL said:
Yeah, I'd watch that. Throwing rocks in your glass house might not end well for you....
Click to expand...

So, you feel that economists are always right?
 
Waddy said:
economists weren't driving the train but they didn't see it coming, either. The bankers knew exactly what they were doing; and they knew the taxpayer would take the fall for them.
Click to expand...

Some did, some didn't. Bottom line is it's fine if you want to blame economists, but the failures were across the board and including roughly the entire financial sector worldwide, and all those investors buying dog crap, and more.
 
code1211 said:
So, you feel that economists are always right?
Click to expand...

No, of course not, because any group in the history of mankind that predicts future events will be wrong, about 100% of the time on average. They might get the trends right, but the amount wrong, or the trends wrong entirely, or the timing wrong, etc. and in a group of people like economists, like all groups, such as people who lean "Other" on DP, there is wide disagreement among members of that group.

I just don't have a lot of patience with the right wing tendency these days to dismiss expertise entirely, and pretend that some idiot drunk at the end of your local bar is as good a source as anyone else. You say Krugman's an idiot, but I bet you don't read his output, and haven't ever read any of his research, so what you mean is he was WRONG!!! Well, so was anyone on the planet who ever predicted anything on a weekly basis for a couple decades.
 
JasperL said:
Some did, some didn't. Bottom line is it's fine if you want to blame economists, but the failures were across the board and including roughly the entire financial sector worldwide, and all those investors buying dog crap, and more.
Click to expand...

I don't blame economists for the mess, they just didn't know what was going on. And it was their job to know. Wilful ignorance, maybe? Or jut that it's a "fake science". The bankers at the top knew exactly what was going on, and they knew they had government backing (taxpayer). They had set it up that way. The rating agencies also knew what was going on, but they didn't want to lose the business, so went along with it. And yes, investors down the food chain had no idea what garbage they were investing in, though the returns should have raised some red flags. But they didn't want to look that gift horse in the mouth too closely. Why some people didn't do a perp walk into prison is astonishing......or maybe not.
 
Waddy said:
I don't blame economists for the mess, they just didn't know what was going on. And it was their job to know. Wilful ignorance, maybe? Or jut that it's a "fake science". The bankers at the top knew exactly what was going on, and they knew they had government backing (taxpayer). They had set it up that way. The rating agencies also knew what was going on, but they didn't want to lose the business, so went along with it. And yes, investors down the food chain had no idea what garbage they were investing in, though the returns should have raised some red flags. But they didn't want to look that gift horse in the mouth too closely. Why some people didn't do a perp walk into prison is astonishing......or maybe not.
Click to expand...

Again, some economists knew and said so at the time, others didn't. I read lots of economists at that time pointing out we were in a bubble. Enough of them that Greenspan addressed those concerns head on. Of course he claimed there wasn't a bubble. Here's Krugman, called an "idiot" above, calling a housing bubble in Jan 2006, when the market topped out in the summer 2006, or six months later. Schiller is another well known economist calling out the housing bubble in real time. There were many more - I read them in real time, and the analysis seemed obvious to me in real time.

And it's also not clear that the bankers knew they'd crash the world financial system. Many of those banks and other institutions failed, went to $0, entire companies written off as worthless, massive losses across the system, real losses, and only a few bailed out and survived. So you're way over simplifying the failures and for some reason only attributing a failure to know to one group - economists - and many of them did get it right and were rolled over by the gains as the bubble continued, until it burst.
 
JasperL said:
Again, some economists knew and said so at the time, others didn't. I read lots of economists at that time pointing out we were in a bubble. Enough of them that Greenspan addressed those concerns head on. Of course he claimed there wasn't a bubble. Here's Krugman, called an "idiot" above, calling a housing bubble in Jan 2006, when the market topped out in the summer 2006, or six months later. Schiller is another well known economist calling out the housing bubble in real time. There were many more - I read them in real time, and the analysis seemed obvious to me in real time.

And it's also not clear that the bankers knew they'd crash the world financial system. Many of those banks and other institutions failed, went to $0, entire companies written off as worthless, massive losses across the system, real losses, and only a few bailed out and survived. So you're way over simplifying the failures and for some reason only attributing a failure to know to one group - economists - and many of them did get it right and were rolled over by the gains as the bubble continued, until it burst.
Click to expand...

Most of the economists were clueless, or accommodating. I don't BLAME them for being anything but stupid or possibly willfully ignorant. The top bankers and rating agencies knew full well what was going on, and the possible consequences. They relied on being backed by taxpayers. So they took the chance knowing the possible crash. They are guilty of fraud and deception. They knew they were bundling junk in with some good paper. Then bought off the ratings agencies to make the trash look good. People should have gone to prison.
 
code1211 said:
I was just watching a TV News Show with various economic experts bemoaning the fact the the economy has REALLY, REALLY slowed down.

They all agreed that the economy has never slowed down this much, this fast- never, no way, no how! They all seem to be in agreement that the slow down will not end. We'll never be "normal" again.

It struck me that they were similar to a group of sports "experts" all discussing the offense of their local college football team and comparing the points scored in April so far to the points scored last November.

Solemnly, they all notice that the points scored in April are down. WAY DOWN! They've never seen a fall-off like this one. Our team, they note, hasn't scored a single point in any week this month. In November they scored every week!

What they fail to mention is the one critical point central to the discussion:

THERE ARE NO GAMES SCHEDULED IN APRIL. THE TEAM WAS TOLD TO STAY HOME. THERE ARE NO GAMES PLAYED. POINTS CAN'T BE SCORED.

Are they really not aware of the elephant sitting on their chest? Amazing! They don't see it, feel it or smell it.

Economists gleefully say doom. They all predict it and, like a broken clock are exactly right sometimes, about two seconds daily out of 86,000, but the occurrences are rare and useless.

Still, they seem to love the sound of each others' voices and the ongoing agreement that they share voicing poorly reasoned pessimism for a future of unremitting, oppressive ruin and poverty.

In the meantime, those with any sense are buying stocks and are already realizing big gains. Seriously, what's wrong with these guys?
Click to expand...

And then this happened.

Jobless claims rise as cutoff of extra $600 benefit nears
 
JasperL said:
No, of course not, because any group in the history of mankind that predicts future events will be wrong, about 100% of the time on average. They might get the trends right, but the amount wrong, or the trends wrong entirely, or the timing wrong, etc. and in a group of people like economists, like all groups, such as people who lean "Other" on DP, there is wide disagreement among members of that group.

I just don't have a lot of patience with the right wing tendency these days to dismiss expertise entirely, and pretend that some idiot drunk at the end of your local bar is as good a source as anyone else. You say Krugman's an idiot, but I bet you don't read his output, and haven't ever read any of his research, so what you mean is he was WRONG!!! Well, so was anyone on the planet who ever predicted anything on a weekly basis for a couple decades.
Click to expand...

Regarding economists, It seems to me that if you provide 10 economists with identical data and ask for their prediction, you'll get ten different opinions.

Regarding Krugman, his predictions are always exactly the same and they are: Democrats good. Republicans bad. He's a shill.

I am certainly NOT an economist. In a 1 month period this Spring, though, I bought $3100 of stocks. It's up right now by about $1000. It was up by about $1600 a few weeks ago.

What did Krugman suggest in Mid March? Here's a link to the tin foil hat predictions of Paul Krugman. What a troll!

Paul Krugman Tightens Tin-Foil Hat in Latest Bizarre Attempt to Prove Trump Will Try to Steal Election
 
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