Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Predicting the Future

While I hold an honours Degree in Mathematical Economics, I would love nothing more than to tell you what is going to happen in the immediate future, in these difficult times. My parents invested thousands of dollars in my education, over the course of which I studied every last functional component of our economy. And despite graduating with honours, I have no idea what is going to happen even 6 months from now. I am pessimistic, and my instincts tell me that drastically increasing government spending when the global financial system is collapsing is a recipe for disaster; I don't know what is going to happen. Quite frankly, nobody does. While the educational requirements to become a medical doctor are far more strict than to become an economist, the animal that is the world economy is far more complex than the human body. A doctor can walk into the emergency room and ask for symptoms, blood pressure, and vital signs, and diagnose and cure the patient in a matter of minutes. To do likewise to the economy is folly. I don't care if you have a doctorate in economics, or simply took an introductory course as a freshman; there is no way you can say what will work. Right now, all the experts are guessing. Whose guess will be right? Nobody knows for sure, but I will say this, for each expert that get it right, there will be hundreds that were way wrong. It is what is.

3 comments:

  1. So why is everyone blaming Mike Harris .

    ReplyDelete
  2. And I thought I had a hard enough time modelling air flow around Helicopter Rotor Blades, for my Aerospace Engineering Thesis.

    Point taken, you cannot predict the future, even a future in a small environment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As both an economist and a medical doctor I agree with you. However I would say that we should carefully examine what happened in the past when considering future actions. Sounds simplistic when in reality as you know it is complex and never are all the variables the same, but unfortunately I rarely hear the media consider past actions or even economists.

    I do think some dramatic actions can definitely be examined. Going another trillion into debt as the US is doing is dangerous.

    ReplyDelete