On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
So how should we treat this from the Fianancial Times:
Merrill chief sees severe global slowdown
By Greg Farrell in New York
Published: November 11 2008 14:42 | Last updated: November 11 2008 20:06
The global economy is entering a slowdown of epic proportions comparable with the period after the 1929 crash, John Thain, chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch, warned on Tuesday.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/834ebf5e-aff9-11dd-a795-0000779fd18c.html
What is true is not necessarily the underlying projection but the fact that presumably expert people are saying these things.
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Wasn't the problem that the experts got it wrong? Sure, we can't say who is going to be wrong, but that's part of the whole package of presenting different points of view. We don't need to try and get it right, but instead we need to document, in relative proportion, what is being said by who (though this changes from day to day). The trouble is that the "consensus" among economic experts is volatile. In some ways, you have to wait for history to render a verdict (come back in 50 years or so). Looking at what was actually said at the time about the 1929 crash, and then comparing this to what was said later on, is interesting. For example, I read somewhere that the 1930s Great Depression was caused not by the 1929 crash, but by longer-term underlying factors that had been around before the 1929 crash, and that the crash was a symptom rather than a cause.
Yes, here, we are, I read it on Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929#Impact_and_academic_d...
"...the now standard interpretation of what made the "great contraction" so severe. It was not the downturn in the business cycle, trade protectionism or the 1929 stock market crash that plunged the country into deep depression. It was the collapse of the banking system during three waves of panics over the 1930-33 period."
Collapse of the banking system? That sounds familiar.
Carcharoth