The Economist Magazine says ‘Sorry we didn’t see the recession coming on’
In an article in the New York Times, by Stephanie Clifford, we hear the feeble excuses of a formerly trusted ‘expert’, The Economist Magazine, who blew it:
“About 2008: sorry,” reads a note from the issue’s editor, Daniel Franklin, in the prediction edition for 2009. Who would have seen the financial crisis coming, Mr. Franklin asked? “Not us. The World in 2008 failed to predict any of this,” he said.
In what could be the most ridiculous statement of 2008, The Economist said ‘oops, we didn’t see it coming’ to the recession that is enveloping the globe.
WTF?
They’re not Sunset Magazine, or Veranda Magazine, or SciFi Magazine. They are ‘The Economist’. They seriously did not see this coming?
The housing market contracted. Regular people shared viral videos about how banks were way, way beyond their normal lending limits, extended beyond their usual loan-to-capital ratios, but the Economist didn’t know?
Wages stayed stagnant, prices for everything rose, two-income families were suffering. Who was in charge of that magazine, if they didn’t foresee a global slowdown. Books like ‘Trillion Dollar Meltdown‘, ‘Bad Money‘ and ‘The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism‘ dared to broach what Americans did not want to hear, that we are a nation deeply in debt, at war in a war we can not afford, wasting away our infrastructure with starving citizens who can’t make ends meet, debasing our currency, losing our pre-eminence in the global economy. Sure the books were published in 2008, but they were written in 2006 and 2007 based on information The Economist had access to and reported.
The Economist ‘did not see this coming?’
I did. I sold my house and got out of a million dollar mortgage because I could see a real estate slowdown and I made tough decisions before the undertow hit. My realtor, Warren Mullen, saw the slowdown coming. Anyone who took out a second or third mortgage saw it coming, when they suddenly had a harder time qualifying. Money was leaving the lending markets by mid 2007. Credit card companies jacked up their rates to cardholders, in 2007 and contracted their offers of available credit to new cardholders.
Either I am entirely prescient and should be paid on salary by magazines, the government and private industry, or The Economist whiffed on this one and is now taking the ‘We’re sorry, we didn’t know’ route.
In an interview, Mr. Franklin shrugged at the bad calls. “It’s nice to be right, but it’s not the only point of this,” he said. “Part of it is to say what’s going to be on the global agenda.” In store for the coming year, The Economist says, is an older work force, a recession and a boom in Blu-ray disc sales.
Blu-ray sales? An older workforce? That’s The Economist’s 2009 predictions?
How about a huge unemployed % of American workers who no longer have health insurance? How about municipalities bankrupt? How about a currency and monetary system entirely debased by the Federal Reserve and now trillions of dollars of created money, TARP?
I understand that President Bush didn’t understand this was going to happen, but that’s because he chooses to live in a rarified elitist world, joshing in his tuxedo that ‘the rich are his base’.
But a magazine called The Economist? You can’t ask to be seen as an expert and then wave your hand dismissively, ‘so sorry’, when the curtains get pulled back by the little dog, like the Wizard of Oz.
FAIL.
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