Looming economic collapse

[carlvs]

2012!!! The end times are amongst us.

In that case, forget stocks, bonds, or even gold!

Your best investment would likely be in large, heavily armoured super ships - and a few engineers to check for any possible design "flaws" like, say, engines that can't start without all the extetior doors being shut ...

(sorry ...couldn't resist)

 

[stilicho]

What's the difference between "a cautious analyst" and "a one-note wingnut"?

One of my rules of thumb for distinguishing a genuine expert from a lunatic scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe is that a genuine expert offers different opinions and makes different recommendation in different circumstances. If a doctor, he doesn't offer the same diagnosis every time. If a music critic, he doesn't passionately hate every concert he's attended. If an economist, he doesn't always predict doom and gloom --- or happy singing flowers and bunnies, for that matter.

I've never read a positive statement about the economic future from Roubini.

I saw Roubini speak live and he's rather different in person than in his brief articles. He concentrated on the statistics from which he'd derived his analyses and quite frankly explained that there were always margins of error. I went there with a friend of mine who's an analyst at our company and a member of a professional association geared towards planning and analysis.

He tends to overuse superlatives but the content is pretty solid.

 

[stilicho]

And 25% in gold? That goes beyond stupid to "conspiracy-tard." I don't know where this idea that gold is an inflation hedge originated,.... but it's not. Just look at the numbers since 1970. It's also not a good store of value; it's way too volatile. And of course buying gold now, at the peak of one of the largest bubbles in gold's history, is a classic sign you don't know what you're doing.

I wonder if any of these people have considered what the economic consequences of having every investor placing a quarter of their investment into gold and gold derivatives. Tulip-bulb-mania comes to mind.

 

[timhau]

Those evil commie lackeys at CNN are doing their best to dissuade people from buying GOLD.

 

[drkitten]

Those evil commie lackeys at CNN are doing their best to dissuade people from buying GOLD.

Not just a bubble, but "a major bubble." Clearly part of the reality-based disinfo movement.

 

[lomiller]

out of curiosity, where were the experts before the financial meltdown? i`m more likely to trust an expert to get us out the mess if they warned me it was coming beforehand. i know the argument is that you can`t deal with a crisis until it happens, but i will default to somebody that saw the warning signs, properly diagnosed them, and was realistic to the limitations that were/are available to fix said problems.

Pretty much everyone saw at least some warning signs, but there are always warning signs that could lead to bad things if not handled correctly. Right up until Lehmans collapsed it still seemed possible to navigate though the crisis and end up with a fairly normal recession. Given that this is normally what happens to a potential crisis I think the people betting on that may have been justified in their views.