Before mid 2007 almost all political pundits had declared Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani the nominees of the two major parties for the president of United states for Nov 2008 elections. Political rookie Barack Obama didn't stand any chance against the clinton machine and John McCain's political future was already dead. By this date, the same pundits have already authored books and talked thousand hours on-air , on how John McCain revived his campaign and how Barack Obama actually manage to beat the clinton machine and eventually became the 44th US president.
Who are these experts, anyway ? Some have spend their whole adult life in politics and may have predicted couple incidents correctly, and those couple incidents are enough proof of their expertise. These guys are similar to weather forecasters, they are not held responsible for going awry. These are the jobs where people make money either way, being right or wrong. There are many group of people who can be kept in the same column. In these days how can I miss a certain group: “Economists”.
Economists, during summer of 08, were describing how serious the recession was going to be and now they are drawing comparison with the great depression. How will this economic mess effect USA and the rest of the world in long term ? How long will this crunch last ? They are competing with each other to provide us the most articulate answer. Half of them seem to believe in the stimulus package and other half think it will severe the problem. Both of them sound equally right and equally confusing to general public, is their any science behind their claim or they are just supporting their parties ? And should we believe these guys ? because majority of them never had a hint of this crash until it happened. When Hank Paulson came up with 700 billion bailout package last year when one after the other bank tanked, nobody knew why its exactly 700 billion ? They just supposed they need a big number for rescue and came up with a supposedly big number. Inept people like me consider economics as a branch of science even though we don't understand it but what do these experts think ?
If these economists swap their job with weather guys or with political pundits will the outcome be any different ? I doubt it.
2 comments:
weathermen are better nowadays..at least around US...
I am finding hard to understand economics too, global nature of economics makes it even harder to come up with a model that forecasts a possible scenario...there are too many variables and uncertainties involved.
And unlike weathermen, Economist can't have the satellite imagery to work with :)
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