On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> I am fully with you on the predictive aspect of the crisis talk, but you
> seem to forget your own advice to look into what makes people "tick." Doom
> saying is a bunch of hogwash if you take it as an advice to build your
> future on it, but it tells you something about the state of mind of the doom
> sayers.
But it's not just telling you how people "tick": if everybody thinks a bank is going to fail and they draw out their money--the bank will fail! This gloominess can have real, material effects. That's a strange thing about economic issues: if enough people perceive a certain economic reality, and then act on the basis of that perception, they can bring about the state of affairs they perceived--even if it was originally a misperception!
Miles