[Infowarrior] - OpEd: Tell Us the Future. Then Again, Don’t.

[Richard Forno]

Tell Us the Future. Then Again, Don’t.
By BEN STEIN
Published: March 28, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/business/29every.html?_r=1&ref=media

I AM bemused by the contretemps between Jon Stewart, of “The Daily  
Show” on Comedy Central, and my longtime friend Jim Cramer of CNBC.

As you may know, Mr. Cramer appeared earlier this month on “The Daily  
Show,” where Mr. Stewart yelled and cursed at him, saying he did not  
let Americans know just how serious the problems were on Wall Street.  
Previously on his program, Mr. Stewart berated Mr. Cramer’s stock- 
picking; the criticism was especially sharp about his earlier  
optimistic talk about Bear Stearns.

During the colloquy, Mr. Stewart lambasted Mr. Cramer as failing to  
anticipate events and inform his audience about those events.

I am bemused because I have long noticed that almost all economic  
pundits and soothsayers — whether on television, in newspapers, or at  
brokerage firms and conferences, are asked to tell the future. And  
most of them agree to try to do so, and the really successful ones  
actually say they can do it — and they say it with extreme conviction.  
Some of them are stunningly well paid for their efforts, even though  
they are wrong decade after decade. And I would be remiss if I did not  
add that I have succumbed to this temptation to speak as if I could  
tell what the future holds.

But the fact is that we as humans cannot tell the future. It does not  
matter whether you are Mr. Cramer or if you are Warren Buffett, an off- 
the-charts genius on a scale rarely seen. It does not matter if you  
are Milton Friedman or Paul Samuelson or James Tobin, all Nobel  
laureates. Human beings cannot tell the future, or at least cannot  
tell it in any consistent way.

Humans can’t consistently pick the right stocks or call markets,  
foretell political or geopolitical events or successfully predict  
changes in interest rates or commodity prices.

Life is far too complex and baffling for the minds of mortals to  
understand it as it happens, let alone to predict it accurately. (I am  
mindful of how Professor Friedman, a true supernova of brilliance,  
said of economic forecasting, “If you’re going to predict, predict  
often.”) Some humans shine like dazzling stars when their predictions  
turn out to be true, but those same humans can’t ever be counted on to  
replicate the feats regularly.

Yet, we cry out for someone to tell us the future, like children who  
want to hear the end of the story. When Mr. Cramer tries to satisfy  
that need, he is doing no more than answering a deep human wish. But  
he — and everyone else in a similar situation — should make it clear  
that these are no more than opinions and guesses, which could easily  
be wrong and often are.

This is not just boilerplate. This is life. The way it is.

I was reminded of that as I wrote this in my modest apartment in  
Washington. I took a stroll over to the Barnes & Noble on M Street NW.  
There was a large table of books about Barack Obama. There were two  
medium-size tables of books about how to thrive in a depressed economy  
and another display of books about the collapse of Wall Street (none  
by me).

Two years ago, as I recall, the books were about getting rich quick,  
about the glamour and glory of Wall Street and about making your  
fortune by flipping houses.

Just two years ago, how many people would have confidently predicted  
that we would elect our first African-American president in 2008? Who  
would have imagined that Citigroup would trade for a time under $1 or  
that General Electric would trade for a time under $6 or that Bear  
Stearns and Lehman Brothers would virtually vanish, or that a  
graduating class of law students would be unable to get jobs or that  
high-end M.B.A.’s would be unemployable?

And who would have guessed that we would have a fall of more than 50  
percent in the broad stock indexes or that oil would triple in price  
and then fall by more than $100 a barrel? Some people might have seen  
parts of this pattern, but all of it? Again, life is far too complex  
to be predicted with any consistency.

I DON’T blame Mr. Cramer for trying to act as if he knows the future.  
That’s his gig. But the most that economic seers can do is apply  
broad, generally acceptable principles to current situations and try  
to go from there. When I stray far from that, I hope that thoughtful  
readers will call me to account.

Life is deeply, terrifyingly uncertain. I applaud a comedy guy from  
Comedy Central for calling us all to account.

Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz at nytimes.com 
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