Douglas Carswell's Blog

Pundits are the real speculators

"Italian bond yields are rising because the markets want Berlusconi to quit" the pundits were telling us on Monday.

Today they were telling us those yields were still rising because Berlusconi had quit.

Europe's financial crisis has shown the extent to which many media pundits clutch around for explanations without necessarily having a clue about cause and effect.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because something follows another it doesn't mean it caused it.

Nothing surprising about that, you might say. As humans perhaps we are hard wired to confuse causation with correlation.

But in what sense are those "experts" who do so any better at analyzing what is happening than the rest of us?

Precisely the same sort of pundits who haven't a clue as to why bond yields might be rising are also telling us that the European Central Bank must print more money. And that we must have another bailout. And that the Eurozone must be maintained to avoid disaster.

All so much wild, often recycled, speculation.

My reading of it, for what it is worth, is that the markets - thousands of real people making real decisions with their own money - have started to factor in the break up of the Euro. The pundits and the politicians will eventually catch up.

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