A Good Rule to Stop Worrying About Scary Economics Articles
Here is a general rule that you should use every time you read an article about the economy that scares you: "If you cannot summarize it on a forum, ignore it."
There are lots of article writers who don't understand economics. They go online and say anything they want about economic cause-and-effect. The scarier they make it sound, the better they feel about themselves.
This is especially true with articles on the Zero Hedge site. That's because most of them are not signed. Therefore, every crackpot can go online and offer his theory, and nobody calls him into question. He is anonymous.
The site's editor loves to do this. Articles get lots of hits. That builds the site. That makes him money. So, he publishes wild, unsupported articles.
He also publishes some good ones. But I don't pay any attention to any of them that do not bear somebody's name. There should be a click-through to the original article. If it's an anonymous "Tyler Durden" article, I may read it for amusement, but rarely am I educated by it.
There are crackpot websites by the tens of thousands. The wilder the conclusions, the more frightened their readers become. That's the authors' intent. They love to scare people. It makes them feel important.
These are people who don't have any money to invest. They don't make money by investing in terms of their positions. Anyway, most of them don't. They just spout off.
Site members sometimes post a link on a forum and say: "Any comments?". Here's my comment: until you can summarize the article without rereading at it, you don't really take it seriously.
When you can summarize the article from memory, you take it seriously. When you then ask a question about the implications of this article, or the legitimacy of the argumentation, you are acting responsibly. You should be using the forum to decide about making an investment or some other decision. You want greater information. You are thinking about making a decision, but you want other members to examine the credibility of the article that is pressuring you to make the decision. That's what the forums are for. They help members make better decisions.
It's a waste of time to post a link to an article and then ask: "Any opinions?" Opinions on what? What is the argument? What are the implications of the argument? What decisions should be made if the article is true? What specific action should be taken? If you don't present the argument of the article, and you don't ask specific questions about either the logic of the argument or the implications of the argument, you are just playing a game of "wet my Depends."
We really are in a crisis situation economically. Now is not the time to play "wet my Depends." Now is the time to think through the logic of scary articles whose only goal may be to persuade you to wet your Depends.