🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 12 Oct 1998 04:58:38 GMT, ElocutusOfBorg@hotmail.com
(Elocutus, First Borg Son) wrote:

>Rising from fathoms unknown to the minds of men,
>smanes@NOSPAM.HEREmagpie.com (Steve Manes) intoned (and nyc.general
>quaked):
>>On Sun, 11 Oct 1998 05:32:35 GMT, ElocutusOfBorg@hotmail.com
>>(Elocutus, First Borg Son) wrote:
>>>>Where do you work, teach?  In a biosphere?  Try reading the financial
>>>>news.  It's in the headlines, where you can't miss it.
>>>
>>>No.  I work and teach in the real world, a place very different from
>>>the world portrayed by the mainstream press, which has long since
>>>given up attempting to even approximate the truth, preferring instead
>>>to wallow in sensationalism and skew, two things this thread seems to
>>>embrace.
>>
>>In other words, you don't know and you don't care.
>
>No--in other words, I care too much to listen to anecdotal evidence
>and sensationalism with something this important.
>
>To see the mainstream press call it, we're in the middle of a market
>crash.  To see it on CNBC, in the Wall Street Journal, and the
>Economist, it's a cyclical market downturn--a natural part of the
>market.

As much as many, including myself a lot of the time, would like to
jump on this guy, he is right to a large degree. Having worked in the
financial press, I can tell you that a lot of the outlets --
especially television ones -- will change their tunes whenever the
market changes its tune.

IOW, when the bulls are back, they go find bullish analysts that say
the world is great, put all your money into equities and get ready to
make big bucks. When it's bad, they send a reporter down to a Charles
Schwab office to make it look like people are bailing out of stocks
right and left.

It's not all the media's fault. A lot of it has to do with the fact
that Wall Street is basically an educated crap shoot. Successful
analysts might be right 50 percent of the time, but as long as they
come through with one correct prediction, their career is pretty much
set. What is hard to convey in reporting and what analysts don't want
to mention is nobody really knows that much more about what will
happen than the next guy.