Another Cassandra

This is a good read, a sobering read.  But there's a good reason why no one listens to the doom and gloom predictions - there are always doom and gloom predictions.  They don't come from the same voices and the voice that accurately predicts one DGP won't be able to pick the next.  The authors loud and self important voice makes a compelling argument, but I think he misses the key point - no one knows, and those who think they do have the fatal conceit. 

The crux of the human condition - we can consider the future, but we can't know enough to predict.  We think we must act on what we know, we even convince ourselves that we CAN predict - but we'll be wrong in our predictions more than we're right.  This is so essential to the human condition - the anxst over forecasting - that entire industries are built on our obsession with this experience - gambling, sports casting, pre-game predictions that never come true but are still such money makers and audience grabbers that they happen each week as we agonize over "what will happen?"

The way that the author is completely correct however, is that we're morons if we trust those who sit in the seats of power when they tell us "it's all ok."  They don't know either, but even if they could, they couldn't tell us.  Imagine the panic that would result if the Fed Chairman said anything other than "Hey it's great!  I'm in complete control!"  And everyone knows that.  So the human game that is played boils down to how well he can seduce us, how well can he sell us, how authentic can he appear to be, in his reports? 

I seems stranger each day.  We think there are people who are smarter than we are who are running things, and take comfort in that.  I believe it is more likely they are as clueless as we are, but don't realize it - or if they do, the realize it too late when they cannot afford to admit to their ignorance.  It's a house of cards founded on the fatal conceit!