Nonfarm payrolls fell by a greater-than-expected 263,000 in September, the Labor Department reported. It marked the 21st consecutive month of job losses.
None of that is a surprise to anyone paying attention to what is happening in the world but something that troubles me is beautifully shown in the attached graphic.
The orange marker is what the experts and analysts agreed would be the number. But it was wrong, not just a bit wrong, but badly wrong. Its been happening all over the map; the only thing that experts these days appear to agree on is something that is wrong. How come they are still experts? I'm a bunny, I dropped out of University in my first year but not only did I see all this coming, I took actions to prepare for it and I now work on the assumption that my analysis of the situation is pretty good - supported, led, guided etc by other people for sure, but people I have chosen because they appear to have a realistic understanding of the world, ie, my analysis of their performance is also good. So I have to wonder what the hell these experts are looking at and how they are able to reach their inevitably erroneous conclusions. And when it comes to analysts, what in hell are they, in fact, analysing, and what kind of analytical tools are they using on these data?
And above all, why don't they seem able to learn that what they are doing is SNAFU? seems to me that the only part of their title that is valid is the anal part, they seem to be pulling a lot of their work from there.
The only answer that I can come up with is corruption. There's almost certainly some of the "if you give me the words I want I'll pay you lots of money" kind of corruption, but I think it goes further. I think we have reached the point of "this file cannot be opened because it is corrupted". Somewhere deep in the workings of our system, things are not right, the DNA appears to have been corrupted, mutated into a form that may not be compatible with survival. Convince me I'm wrong
Updated responding to Brane and Robin belowPretty much agreed with both of you.
It seems to me there has been a marriage (make that a prostitution) between mathematics and magic called economics.
But what really gets me is that we are all dealing with pretty much the same data and drawing such hugely divergent conclusions. Which means that there is something seriously wrong with the psychological algorithms governing their thinking.
You and I look at the entrails of a dead chicken and we see entrails, and maybe dinner, they see things that make their owners happy.
There is a market for economic theories and those that feed the preferences and predilections of those already in power will get the attention, regardless of how wrong they may be.
Or to use the infamous words of Tony Blair and co, they "fit the facts around the policy"
Unfortunately, this works pretty well for a long time (the universe appears to be very tolerant of stupidity and corruption) right up till the moment when it fails completely.
No doubt the Roman divines managed to read endless success for their owners until the barbarians smashed down the gates of Rome. If only those smashing our gates were no more than a more successful tribe. They are not, we have pushed our habitat to its limits and now we are hard up against the laws of physics and genuine mathematics.
BTW, I tried to post this in the comments field and got the response "We're sorry we cannot accept this data. Anyone else experienced that?
Isn't this more or less, garbage in garbage out? But the more I read 'experts' especially economics experts the more they have a belief in mathematical formula's of economics. Economics is NOT Math! It's a fancy, belief system, an analog of a global barter system, and that CAN NOT be qualified with simple math algorithms.
Posted by: Branedy | October 07, 2009 at 10:29 PM
I don't have much experience but from what I've seen most analysts seem to know little about the industries they are analysing.
Have a listen to the BBC podcast series "The Crash". So many "could not believe" the financial house of cards they built would tumble, or be allowed to tumble without bailouts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/docarchive/
Posted by: RobiNZ | October 07, 2009 at 11:25 PM