First Step: Fire All The Experts
Key Obama economics advisor Lawrence Summers: Wha' happened?
From today’s NY TImes (emphasis added):
Continuing Jobless Claims Rise More Than Expected
… The number of people continuing to claim jobless benefits jumped unexpectedly by 101,000 to 4.61 million. That was above analysts’ expectations
We have one question: who are these “analysts” and why do they keep getting surprised by how bad the economy is? Here they are underestimating the severity of the housing crash. From Seeking Alpha:
Pending home sales fell a more than expected 4% (vs. -1% consensus), NAR reported, citing mounting job losses and evaporating consumer confidence.
Surprise, surprise: the “consensus” … was wrong. Not only wrong, very wrong. And overly optimistic. Same goes for retail sales. From the Washington Post:
… discounters like Wal-Mart, luxury vendors like Neiman Marcus and pretty much everybody in between saying today that their holiday season results were poorer than expected.
And consumer confidence. From USA Today:
U.S. consumer confidence fell unexpectedly sharply in June
And the stock markets. From Inside Futures:
Economic statistics and corporate earnings were much worse than expected in 2008 and could continue to surprise on the downside during 2009.
Um … one more question. If the numbers consistently “surprise on the downside,” how long before they stop being a “surprise”?
Or, better yet, how long before we decide that the guys doing the “expecting” aren’t worth a damn and are probably the same crowd that got us into this mess in the first place with unreasonably optimistic readings of our economic behavior?
How long until we find some new “experts”? Lord knows, we need them. Unfortunately, the incoming administration is stacked with the same reverse-Nostradamuses (see photo above) that pushed our economy into this deregulated, debt-fueled death spiral. So don’t be surprised if there’s a lot more ’surprisingly’ bad news to come.
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