Wherein we are bombarded with felicities, and an avalanche of information, overwhelmed by a tapestry of fragments, buried under data, chat rooms, millions of web sites, hundreds of channels, all conveyed to homes and computers by cable, satellite, networks, Internet, TV networks and stations, DVD, videocassettes. Assuming of course that anyone who awakened at so early an hour to be here can be judged to be rational. First, I learned that predicting anything is akin to tracings on dry leaves in the wind. Especially is this so in making fiscal forecasts or stock market movements.
Experts parade blithely through broadcast and cable programs.
Out of the babble of their colliding prophecies comes a typhoon of dizzying contradictions. Or to paraphrase the words of H. L. Mencken, a stock market prophet is a person who can sit on a fence and keep both ears to the ground. Just remember, when an economist or an investment banker can t remember his phone number, he will give you an estimate. On Wall Street no one knows anything. In the White House, in the Congress and among the law firms and lobbyists that inhabit the capital of the Republic, no one knows anything about the future.