Financial Analysts Cover Their Assets

If you listened to The Current on CBC Radio today you heard Anna Maria Tremonti interview Joel Lovell, financial analyst for GQ Magazine. Now, I could go on about the merits of any financial analysis that appears in a magazine featuring scantly clad women on the cover, but I won't (besides that obvious jab).

The issue I have is more with economists all over the globe, and less with Mr. Lovell specifically. I first had an issue with economists when I met the cold-heart and shred pessimism of Milton Friedman.

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

This type of indifferent pragmatism has left the world in a situation where they are now turning on the words of economists. Instead, people and companies are turning to politicians for bailouts, stimulus packages, and bailouts. What economists previously called the problem, we call the solution.

What annoys me now is that these analysts are going on the radio and telling listeners there was no way they could predict the downward spiral we now face. Mr. Lovell compared this inability to that of a Doctor being unable to predict a future diagnosis of cancer. True. However, that same Doctor does not tell you to smoke cigarettes, lay out in the sun without sunscreen, and then tell you they had no way to predict your cellular disease.