Dow at 36,000

[JackRiddler]

1999, in honor of tomorrow's closing bell:

[isachar]

1999, in honor of tomorrow's closing bell:

A classic!

The authors served up a classic example of assuming their own results disguised as 'analysis'.

The phony NIST report is another shining example of such phony analyses.

The two morons who wrote Dow 36,000 were raving lunatics - yet if you recall, they received glowing praise and virtually unlimited coverage in the financial and popular press at the time.

My other favorite classic at around the same time was that idiot Francis Fukuyama's (sp?) 'End of History" tripe. This moron went on to become a hot shot muckety muck. He's still often quoted as if he actually knows something.

Kinda like those pnac'ers, apologists, retired generals, Bushboy bots, etc., who got everything wrong (haha, they just lied) about Iraq, 911, Afghanistan, etc., but they are all still regularly featured on the nightly news.

How is it that any of these fools and morons continue to be given sufficient credibility to even make a dinner reservation? And, why aren't their positions in academia, business, and think tanks given over to those who got it right?

[sunny]

How is it that any of these fools and morons continue to be given sufficient credibility to even make a dinner reservation? And, why aren't their positions in academia, business, and think tanks given over to those who got it right?

Because the question is not "How right are you?" it is "How brown is your nose?" Corporate cultue in a nutshell.

[MacCruiskeen]

How is it that any of these fools and morons continue to be given sufficient credibility to even make a dinner reservation? And, why aren't their positions in academia, business, and think tanks given over to those who got it right?

Because the question is not "How right are you?" it is "How brown is your nose?" Corporate cultue in a nutshell.

Seconding sunny's response. And I'd add that "getting it right" is much less welcome than getting it profitably wrong for those whose investments are not in reason but in money & power. (The mother of a dead soldier might well say, "They got it wrong in Iraq"; but the CEOs of Blackwater & Halliburton are unlikely to agree while they're tracking the steady rise of their own share prices.)

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell. But there's a reason why they're cocksure, and that reason is: their "stupidity" profits them, even if it damages everyone else.

[JackRiddler]

.

@isachar:

Moron is too easy an excuse, and removes the moral dimension. Not that you're doing that, but consider that they may not care about the value of their methodology. They aren't stupid and are presumably able to distinguish right from wrong.

In American culture, many are conditioned to reply to critique as yours as follows: "If they're morons, why did they make so much money?" Or, worse: "They met a market need for self-delusion, good for them. I would have done the same, and lifted some cash from the pockets of the real morons, the people who want to read wishful thinking." These guys are still rewarded as expert consultants, putting the lie to myths of meritocracy.

Would a book titled "DOW TO STAGNATE" or "DOW A PONZI SCHEME" have been a best-seller? Of course, we should note the Dow since 2000 has actually dropped 30-40% or more if we account for inflation, or for the decline of the dollar relative to the euro, or for the rise in dollar-denominated benchmark commodities like oil and gold.

It's like the difference in the career trajectories of pundits who pimped the Iraq war lies, like Zakaria and Friedman, as opposed to those who didn't. Fukuyama's an excellent example of what I mean. A smoother adapter to ideological zeitgeist you will not see! He did "End of History" in the early 1990s, was a PNAC signatory late in the 1990s and an Iraq attacker in 2003, and has since continued to cater to consensus opinion by renouncing the neocons and denouncing the Bush "failure" to plan in Iraq. Whatever his next work of opportunist bullshit is, it's likely to land him on the NYT best-seller list, get him moderate crowds on tour, and win him several hours on C-SPAN's Book TV. Meanwhile, you and I advance a legitimate critique of him on an Internet board.

In short, morons is not the main problem!

ON EDIT:

I see MacC and sunny posted their own basically identical but much pithier responses at the same time. Mine's the longest, do I win or lose?

[isachar]

.

Moron is too easy an excuse, and removes the moral dimension. Not that you're doing that, but consider that they may not care about the value of their methodology. They aren't stupid and are presumably able to distinguish right from wrong.

In American culture, many are conditioned to reply to critique as yours as follows: "If they're morons, why did they make so much money?" Or, worse: "They met a market need for self-delusion, good for them. I would have done the same, and lifted some cash from the pockets of the real morons, the people who want to read wishful thinking." These guys are still rewarded as expert consultants, putting the lie to myths of meritocracy.

Would a book titled "DOW TO STAGNATE" or "DOW A PONZI SCHEME" have been a best-seller? Of course, we should note the Dow since 2000 has actually dropped 30-40% or more if we account for inflation, or for the decline of the dollar relative to the euro, or for the rise in dollar-denominated benchmark commodities like oil and gold.

It's like the difference in the career trajectories of pundits who pimped the Iraq war lies, like Zakaria and Friedman, as opposed to those who didn't. Fukuyama's an excellent example of what I mean. A smoother adapter to ideological zeitgeist you will not see! He did "End of History" in the early 1990s, was a PNAC signatory late in the 1990s and an Iraq attacker in 2003, and has since continued to cater to consensus opinion by renouncing the neocons and denouncing the Bush "failure" to plan in Iraq. Whatever his next work of opportunist bullshit is, it's likely to land him on the NYT best-seller list, get him moderate crowds on tour, and win him several hours on C-SPAN's Book TV. Meanwhile, you and I advance a legitimate critique of him on an Internet board.

In short, morons is not the main problem!

You're right, of course. People at this level are the the apologists and enablers. They are smart people who know just what they're doing.

I refer to them in shorthand as 'morons' because they have academic credentials, but their analyses are complete garbage.

Morons are just run of the mill echo chambers.

[MacCruiskeen]

Mine's the longest, do I win or lose?

There's no arguing with the guy who has the longest. Therefore, you win.

Dale Allen Pfeiffer's is even longer, though, so I have no decent option but to truncate it:

[..]
If you were the CEO of Exxon/Mobile and you knew that within the decade oil production was going to head into an irreversible decline while the price of production would inexorably climb, what would you do today? Well, you might drive up the price of oil now to maximize your profits before the decline. Then you could milk as much money out of the market as possible and be in an optimum position once the decline does begin.

Now I'm not saying oil prices are being manipulated for the reason stated above. However, given the coming peak and decline of oil production, the current situation fits the best scenario for maximizing company profits. You can bet oil executives and investors are not complaining about the current price of oil.

What we are seeing, whether intentional or not, is an economy being primed for collapse. The Fed is flooding the market with dollars. Most of the traditional ways to invest this excess money are currently unappealing. So investors are pouring all of this funny money into oil and other goods (such as grains). As a result, prices are skyrocketing and the wealth of the world is being quickly transferred from the majority to the elite [sic!] minority.

Every time you purchase a gallon of gasoline or a loaf of bread, you hasten this transfer of wealth, giving your hard-earned money to those who are already glutted with their own fortunes. Likewise, every time income taxes are lowered or adjusted and sales taxes are raised, it aids this transfer of wealth.

Gas prices are currently $4/gallon and nearly $5/gallon for diesel. By the end of summer, gasoline is expected to cost $6/gallon — possible even $7. And if we go to war with Iran, we could very quickly see $10/gallon or higher.

We are approaching a currently unknown limit that will bring our country to a halt. When people can no longer afford to drive to work and truckers have to park their rigs and walk away from them, our civilization will be crushed overnight.

And those who are currently reaping the profits do not seem to care. When the smoke clears, they will have transferred the country's wealth — if not the world's — to their own personal accounts. And they will then be able to pick up what is left for pennies on the dollar. ...

http://www.mountainsentinel.com/#smellroses

[JackRiddler]

Dow at 9800!

[chiggerbit]

Holy cow! A person really has to wonder if the market would have been any worse than this if there had been no bailout. We should have saved our money, since it looks like it isn't buying us anything.

[yathrib]

How wrong can these people be and still keep their jobs and their status as experts? If I, as a personal trainer, gave someone an exercise program that I claimed would give him/her a Mr./Ms. Olympia physique with little or no danger of injury, and he/she ended up gaining 50 lbs. and permanently injuring his/her lower back, I'd be fired, sued, and would lose credibility.

This is basically what these "masters of the universe" have done to the economy, and yet they're still masters of the universe. Who was it who said that one's true status can be measured by the remoteness of any consequences if one ****s up?

[chiggerbit]

9597

[chiggerbit]

OMG, a few minutes ago DOW was down 800 pts.

[vigilant]

Mental Health Insurance Coverage Is Protected Under Financial Rescue Plan


At least the emporer with no clothes behind the curtain has a sense of humor huh? Good thing, without it he wouldn't be so cute and cuddly...

[slow_dazzle]

I'm no sage though - all I do is read stuff written by people more savvy than me. I posted a while back on RI to say something like (I can't be bothered looking out the post) "best of luck to all of you - we are going to need it." I said it because everything I have read over the last 7 years or so pointed to economic crisis similar to 1929, if not worse. Well, despite the bail out (aka "the con job to transfer even more money to the pigmen") the markets are tanking world wide and the Yen Carry trade just rolled over 100 and is not stopping (hat tip to rdenner over at LATOC for the story). However, the Carry Trade issue might bite the bankster fucks on the arse apparently. I hope it bites them on the arse and doesn't let go.

Looks like this is the big one and there is fuck all that can be done about it, probably because collapse was the intended outcome all along.

Best of luck people and do whatever you can to weather the storm.

[NeonLX]

Wish I hadn't given up the farm. I was sick of busting my hump just to lose money, so I got out from underneath it. But I sure wish I had some of that land back in order to grow food upon. Now I'm a townie & at the mercy of retailers, wholesalers--and of course *ahem* the market.