Your lips move, but all I hear is blah-blah-blah

October 27th, 2008 at 06:01pm Annette LaCross

First published July 28:

I have always been of the optimistic, if narrow, view that there’s no such thing as a dumb question.

In my admittedly rather Orwellian world, certain questions maybe aren’t as incisive as others, but I’ve always considered the pursuit of knowledge an admirable undertaking, so I try to be patient with the questioner.

Until recently, that is, when a friend asked me how long I think it will be before the economy rights itself.

In the movies, such blockheaded questions are invariably met with sputtering and spitting because the Hero happens to be sipping his drink when said question is asked.

I was spared that indignity, but I did some sputtering of my own before I could frame a suitable answer, and even then all I could manage was something along the lines of “Get real.” And as soon as he opened his mouth, no doubt to ask some pithy follow-up question, I stuck my fingers in my ears.

So I might have been a little more childish than patient. But he deserved it.

Part of my problem just then was his intent: He wasn’t motivated by anything as lofty as the pursuit of knowledge. His motivation had more to do with vague discomfort than a search for a real answer.

In other words, he wanted to know when he could retreat to those halcyon days of yore — last year — when he didn’t worry about the state of his 401(k) and was still blissfully ignorant of terms like “optional adjusted-rate mortgage.”

I stand by my answer. And I defy anyone to come up with a better one.

The truth of the matter is, no one knows. Investment bankers — the ones still in business, anyway — Wall Street analysts and economists of every stripe have been paraded through the media for the past year, all of them spouting the same message: The end is near.

The end of the credit crisis, that is … of mortgage defaults and food that costs a little more than it did last year.

Every week, we are assured that we’ve hit “bottom.” Or, at the very least, that we don’t have much further to go before we do.

In fact, late last year, bold predictions held that the necessary correction in the mortgage market would most certainly have bottomed out by the end of 2008, maybe even by the third quarter. They pooh-poohed suggestions from rogue analysts who suggested there was no way the situation was going to right itself as soon as all that.

Then results from the first quarter of 2008 were announced and, suddenly, the imminent demise of the boom times didn’t seem to be so greatly exaggerated after all.

These days, sheepish analysts have rallied around a new banner: the third quarter of 2009.

Don’t you believe it.

Anyone who’s spent any time studying the vagaries of the economy knows that predicting the market is about as easy as predicting the outcome of a football game. There are far too many dynamics involved to do it with any sort of accuracy.

Sometimes, the best strategy is just to keep your fingers in your ears.

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