Sunday, October 12, 2008

It Isn't Just The Political Press

I really like Jerome and so does most of Daily Kos. Here's why:
One of the striking things about business newspapers, in fact, is that they are great sources of information if you don't read the headlines, the front page or just the leading paragraph of articles, but focus on the full content of the paper. All the information is there, available to be analysed. But the analytical skills of their main pundits and editorialists, and the common wisdom on context that gets distilled into other articles, rarely absorbs that content - in fact, it is often amazing how often it appears that those people in such papers that are in charge of analysing the news and providing an interpretation that will be distributed far and wide (for these pundits are influential) do not read their own paper...
And thus, as mainstream news organisations, politicians and TV anchors get their cues from the Serious People in the business press, the hard information gets lost as analysis turns into mush or propaganda (your choice), and people believe it was never there in the first place.
"Nobody could have predicted" really means "I'm too stupid to know what I'm talking about."

Besides, he's French.
And here's one commenter's take on Roubini's previous predictions.

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