By Dave Anderson:
Here is a year old pundit column from the Washington Post that is shocking in how wrong it got the present in which it was written much less predicting the near future:
By Donald Luskin
Sunday, September 14, 2008There have been 11 recessions since the Great Depression. And we're nowhere close to being in the 12th one now. This isn't just a matter of opinion. Words -- even words as seemingly subjective as "recession" -- have meaning.
Whatever the political outcome this year, hopefully this will prove to be yet another instance of that iron law of economics and markets: The sentiment of the majority is always wrong at key turning points. And the majority is plenty pessimistic right now. That suggests that we're on the brink not of recession, but of accelerating prosperity.
Maybe this will turn out to be the best of times -- at least since the Great Depression.....
Well that was a big steaming pile of turd dropped into the public discourse, just as the global economy seized up the following week, and his candidate suspended his campaign to knock heads together in a smoke filled room to do something.
And yet it is a costless dump into the public discourse. Mark Kleiman correctly notes that Luskin has not lost income nor influence for being amazingly wrong on one of the biggest and easiest calls (at the time this op-ed was published) that anyone who was vaguely interested in economics and the economy could make --- the US economy was in serious trouble last September.
And yet, Donald Luskin is still getting quoted as an expert on how to make money in a recession that he did not believe existed except as a delusion and a political ruse.
Tough to be accountable when there are no costs to being horrendously and easily wrong.
You're kind of late to this, Dave. Hilzoy dealt with it at the Washington Monthly blog the day after it had appeared.
ReplyDeleteIn Brad Delong's immortal words: Donald Luskin - The Stupidest Man Alive.