Sunday, March 8, 2015

Con games

The other day, RtO reviewed Barry Eichengreen's "Hall of Mirrors." Although I admire Eichengreen's analysis (there and in other books such as "Exorbitant Privilege") there is one item where we are far apart: business confidence.

Here we go stating again what should be obvious: business confidence is dangerous.

When is business confidence at its highest? Just before a financial collapse.

I rest my case.

10 comments:

  1. You got a link to show that?

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  2. No, but would you like to nominate some other point in the business cycle?

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  3. For example, in the charts I see, business confidence had a peak in 2004 (both the the U.S. and OECD) which is half a decade before the late 2008 collapse.

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  4. Bret, I've talked to you before about clouding the issue with facts.

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  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_confidence_index#/media/File:U.S._Consumer_Confidence_Index.png

    Read 'em and weep. This is consumer confidence but notice the flat parts. It matches as well the markets which are supposed to tell all. I didn't feel like paying $900 for the Conference Board's historic trends.

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  6. It matches as well the markets which are supposed to tell all.

    Strawman much?

    It would be nice if you overlaid consumer confidence with something, anything, in the pursuit of correlation, at least.

    Because, otherwise, those goal posts are moving so quickly they are actually blue shifting a bit.

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  7. Markets are not reflective of confidence?

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  8. It's your assertion, demonstrate what it correlates with, and over what period.

    In contrast, Bret gave you an actual fact about business confidence, directly related to the OP that directly contradicted your assertion.

    Rather than confront it, you shifted the goalposts to consumer confidence, and didn't correlate it with anything.

    Brilliant, just brilliant.

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  9. Charts he saw. I haven't seen them.

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  10. ... you shifted the goalposts to consumer confidence, and didn't correlate it with anything.

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