I posted in the economics forum primarily because plenty of news in this forum regarding Bernanke, Volcker, etc. People may disagree with Fed policy and I offer this up as an incentive to go for it - disagree and for the naysayers who reply "what are your qualifications" you.. you.. and you are just an anonymous poster. So what. ------------------ Tetlock tracked 284 experts who made 82,361 forecasts over period of years. .........that alleged experts were right less than half the time, and that they were worse than dart throwing monkeys in forecasting outcomes when multiple probabilities were involved. .....knowing a lot, being regarded as a real expert, a wise man, a guru, actuallly makes someone less reliable as a forecaster The more facts, information and history an expert knows the more likely he is to have pet theories and to have developed complex chains of causation in making a prediction. Tetlock believes this is why experts fail to outpredict non experts. ----------------------------------------- It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock's new book . . . that people who make prediction their business--people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables--are no better than the rest of us. When they're wrong, they're rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. . . . It would be nice if there were fewer partisans on television disguised as "analysts" and "experts". . . . But the best lesson of Tetlock's book may be the one that he seems most reluctant to draw: Think for yourself. http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715 I haven't read this book, I'm reading Barton Biggs "Wealth, War and Wisdom" and Biggs refers to Tetlock.