CONFESSIONS OF A DOOMSAYER

gasshopper n antWhat sort of a website has the name “The Depression”?  What a horribly negative thing! Why can’t I talk about all the positives in the world today?

I mean, the vast majority of people battle on gamely, enjoying life by seizing what the day has to offer them, but naysayers like me are spoiling things – going so far as to say we need to adjust the economic system that’s created so much wealth for everyone.

And, for goodness sake, where is the evidence that anything’s wrong?

“The Depression”? No economist has called a depression yet.  Why ‘depression’? Economists know better.  Why, some countries haven’t even experienced the two quarters of negative growth that denote an economic recession yet! Talk about overkill!

Did saying in ‘The Valuer’ quarterly journal in June 1987 that we’d have a recession in 1991/92 as a result of the late 1980s land boom really matter? Why such a negative prediction? Economists didn’t try to scare people with this sort of pre-information: they’re much more positive. They let financial and political events occur before they need to explain them, because they don’t want to ‘scare the horses’ with such negative news prior to the event. That would only get people down; and economists ‘know’ recessions and depressions are simply the natural, cleansing phases of economies.

Understanding that the post-war Kondratieff Wave peaked in 1973 and that the trend would become increasingly deflationary may have permitted me to say in an article in THE AGE on 15 June 2005 interest rates were going to continue to decline, but who am I to contradict the claim of Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen, that the cash rate is going to be increased?

I guess the world divides into grasshoppers and ants, and I’m an ant.

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