Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Like Predicting the Weather

MSNBC has Tim Geithner testifying about the bank bailout "plan". From what I've gathered he has essentially said "we don't know what we're going to do but it's going to cost a lot of money but we don't need any more funds from Congress". Actually I think he's being fairly straightforward for a banker. He saying that things suck, we can only do so much even when we have some idea what to do, and the poison is going to have to work its way out of the system. Naturally the stock market tanked, particularly the bank stocks since it doesn't sound like they're going to immediately get more free money.

Watching and reading about this makes me think of meteorology. Like economics, it operates with a lot of numbers but not nearly enough real information to create methodology to make accurate predictions beyond a narrow time frame. Unlike meteorologists, these people have the means to take action based on their sketchy information. It's hard to find comfort in that.

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