A Theory On The Foundations Of Excessive Bearishness

A couple weeks ago, Paul Kedrosky wondered why there seemed to be a spell of excessive bearishness in the financial blogosphere. I don't think it's just blogs. You see guys like Mort Zuckerman, EIC of US News & World Report going out there predicting soup lines and a AA rating on US bonds (I exaggerate a little bit).

Let me take a stab at why this might be: Most people don't have the mental creativity, intellectual capability or understanding of the economy to formulate a compelling bull case at the moment. That's not meant to be an insult, it's just the facts. Those who are bulls, such as the ones who show up on CNBC, don't do a very good job of making their case. They say things like "unemployment is low, defaults are near historic lows and interest rates are low... I'm buying," which is not all that compelling. On the other hand, there's little to be gained from being merely bearish. If you're just one of these 6-12 month recession types, then you're nobody, because that's very safely within the margins of conventional wisdom.

So that pretty much leaves excessive bearishness as the only viewpoint that can reasonably be constructed based on the readily available facts (i.e., you don't need to do much digging) and which allows the espouser to sound like they're sticking there necks out a little bit. There's a cascading effect with these things, as daring analysis quickly becomes a la mode, setting the bar even higher. And when you get into the fairly insular world of financial bloggers, it's probably even worse.

Comments

[pandora sale]

it is highly unlikely that the wife he found is actually optimal. Within a 10 mile radius (in NYC) there are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of better matches he unfortunately never met. It's unromantic but true that chance played a bigger role in his marriage choice than optimality.

[burberry outlet]

Here's something that struck me: In the search bar, find the representations of Top Gun, Crocodile Dundee, Fatal Attraction and Rain Man. Look at how long each of those spent in the theater. They had runs that went on for several months, with relatively little variation from week to week.

[ray ban]

The NYT offers a very cool interactive chart to visualize over 20 years of data from the box offices. It's definitely worth taking some time just playing around with it, entering in various movie titles to see what their box office like looks like.

[attembemy]

Pharmacy Technician employment possibilities are abundant. Pharmacy technicians deliver the results in a multitude of get the job done settings such as retail pharmacies this sort of as CVS, Walgreens and Osco, hospitals and elderly care facilities. The hrs are commonly numerous from the "typical" 9-five small business hours, typically requiring evening http://www.buylevitranowonline.com>buy Levitra and weekend perform. Desire quite solid for the next five-10 a long time mainly because the newborn boomer era is coming into the stage of their lives in which they are extra likely to use prescriptions.

[ティンバーランド]

東日本大震災の被災地で山積みのがれきは、復興の妨げとなっている。大津波に襲われた岩手、宮城、福島３県の沿岸部は平坦（へいたん）な土地が少なく、港周辺の仮置き場のがれき処理が進まなければ、港や防潮堤の整備も始められない状態だ。

　ティンバーランド環境省によると、３県のがれきの推計量は６日現在で２２６５万トン。うち１５０９万トンが仮置き場に置かれたままだ。３県が県内の施設で処理する分を除く他府県への受け入れ要請量は計３９５万トンに上る。