I found this quote in, of all places, theonion.com’s RSS Feed and thought it fit this blog for today.
“An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.” – Nicholas Chamfort
I read an article on Yahoo! about a new book Alan Greenspan is coming out with soon where he concedes mortgages seem to be a problem. No sh1t smart boy. The quote above pretty much sums up a lot of my feelings towards most economists. They are excellent at diagnosing problems in the past, but have a seriously hard time of getting it right in the present. A lot of what they say makes sense when compared to the past, but they are truly no better fortune tellers than the rest of us on how the masses will react to any news. The emotions of investors is hard to pinpoint. That’s part of what makes investing fun. Even in times where stocks possibly should pull back some on one factor or another investors might be focused on different data that points in another direction. It’s also no secret that the masses tend to overshoot the highs and lows. Timing that can never be picked by economists’ formulas because it comes down to emotional buying and selling. Don’t get me wrong, I still read all the economists can dish out, just in case they get it right sometimes.
Greenspan is being interviewed on “60 Minutes” this Sunday evening. It should be worth watching.