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Comment by NotCamelCase | Hacker News Reader

I am referring to the ones who appear on TV in finance/market-related programs, but I can't stand economists-speak. They love to ambiguate everything they said a minute ago. I don't mean that they bloat everything with technical terms -- somethings are just complicated. Rather, simply voicing opposite claims constantly and avoiding giving a straight answer (for the sake of protection from getting sued? manipulation?).

Example: "I think that a meteor bigger than the Sun is on its way to hit the Earth could be bad news for the economy. However, it may also mean that markets will flourish."

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"As Fed chairman, every time I expressed a view, I added or subtracted 10 basis points from the credit market. That was not helpful. But I nonetheless had to testify before Congress. [...] I would catch myself in the middle of a sentence. Then, instead of just stopping, I would continue on resolving the sentence in some obscure way which made it incomprehensible. But nobody was quite sure I wasn't saying something profound when I wasn't. And that became the so-called Fed-speak which I became an expert on over the years."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedspeak

(Aside: I love your username, haha.)

They do it because, unlike our profession, it's hard to find out when you're wrong right away so they read a lot of competing theories and know that the models are only pale comparisons to all the swirling forces and incentives. What's the likelihood of the DPRK giving up their nukes in the next 5 years? 0.1%? Well if they do it will have massive ramifications on Asian and global security. Moving billions of dollars around. And so on.

So they hedge. And the usually use squishy language when they talk to the public. But for finance professionals they talk more in terms of distributions of outcomes or possible complications. It's a messy science.

It's worse than that... Rather than the DPRK, take the US election. A toss-up before the 3rd of November, with massive ramifications on fiscal policy and therefore GDP growth and currency strength.

I truly shake my head at the software developers who expect economists to give an accurate point forecast of a binary coin-toss, and then deride their expertise as a sham when they describe the scenarios that follow the two outcomes instead.

(And also shake my head at voters who believe "economists" hand-picked by politicians to affirm their policies. In a profession of a million people you can find one to support any policy even if 99% of the profession don't agree -- just like you can find a "computer scientist" who will promise you self-driving cars on the street within three years if you just pay him a million dollar consulting fee.)

TV finance gurus use econ-lingo, but just because it's the magic trick to sounding smart. But most of that makes no sense at all in that context. (Where's the data, what's the natural experiment, in what model, what's the assumptions, etc.)

Okay, sure they throw around basic things, but that's the typical commercialization of every fundamental indicator. They usually tell you nothing, worse they usually show you a graph of some data and tell you a story. Okay, how can you validate it? Okay, maybe you can argue with parts of it. Maybe the idea is to just throw ideas around, so then the viewers can do the same! Great but that's basically a stand up comedy with econ/finance anti-jokes.

I don't know.

To say that someone is telling a lie (as in the article examples) implies he/she knows the truth and then mis-represents it (intentionally).

I have some doubts that most economists actually know the truth, very often they seem more like reporting their own take on some unproved (and often unprovable) theory, which can be stretched to mean everything and the contrary of it, and that causes the "vagueness" you highlight.

Once said that predictions are tough, expecially when they are about the future, I think that astrologists are not that much worse in accuracy than the economists you see on TV.

"Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say 'on hand...', then 'but on the other..."

Harry Truman

Funny, because first I used this form and then changed it to use 'However' because well, that'd be claiming us Homo Sapiens are known to have two hands, which is problematic and no sane economist would say so.

I'm pretty sure I first read that quote in the book "License to be Bad":

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40175311-licence-to-be-b...

It's an old trick. Hand readers, mediums and various types of cold readers are really good at this. You can always be right using these techniques.

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