In which Pooh talks about budgets
So, George W. has spoken, the US budget deficit will shrink dramatically from here on, helped by growth and cuts in discretionary spending. This seems to have riled a few people - not the Democrats, I mean REAL people. Nouriel Roubini is one, and he really gets his teeth into the figures submitted in the budget: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/globalmacro/. Now Nouriel, I don't want to wag a finger but, Bush is a politician, and politician's don't tell the truth. This is the way things are, and anyway, Bush wasn't elected because of his financial acumen, he was elected because the other guy looked worse.
Still, this comes back to my previous blog, where I avowed that lacing the truth with fiction reduces the likelihood of the true parts being believed - except when presented in a specific, spin-doctor-ish way. Perhaps we need to revisit this hypothesis, and make our model for truth/fiction-impact more sophisticated. Perhaps you can help - if a news feature is 90% fact, laced with 10% "assumption", would you let it by as "factual"? If the mix was 70/30, what then? Obviously, by the time you're into 50/50 that's tabloid territory, and as the song says, what a fool believes...
Actually the Nouriel Roubini response to the budget has raised a few questions: first, the website had a certain gravitas, and therefore was worth checking most days to see what insight he and his colleagues have on the [economic] issues of the day. By chucking his toys out of the pram over the - I agree with him incidentally - blatantly manipulated budget data, he has lost some of his hard-won credibility; second, by reacting so vehemently, my immediate inference is that he expected something better. Doh! As we all know, ask 50% of the people and they'll tell you America, burdened with massive consumer debt, is going to hell in a handcart. The other 50% think the sun will shine eternally on the Union. Somewhere between the 2 views is a median, but it is anybody's guess where that is. In short, there really aren't that many truly effective leaders able to take a long-term view of the future for a large organisation, let alone a whole country, and thus politicians are, on the whole, no more able than the rest of us. If someone told me I had to cut a $500bn deficit, AND make the pension outlook bomb-proof, I wouldn't know where to start. But if someone was to offer me the chance...
Still, this comes back to my previous blog, where I avowed that lacing the truth with fiction reduces the likelihood of the true parts being believed - except when presented in a specific, spin-doctor-ish way. Perhaps we need to revisit this hypothesis, and make our model for truth/fiction-impact more sophisticated. Perhaps you can help - if a news feature is 90% fact, laced with 10% "assumption", would you let it by as "factual"? If the mix was 70/30, what then? Obviously, by the time you're into 50/50 that's tabloid territory, and as the song says, what a fool believes...
Actually the Nouriel Roubini response to the budget has raised a few questions: first, the website had a certain gravitas, and therefore was worth checking most days to see what insight he and his colleagues have on the [economic] issues of the day. By chucking his toys out of the pram over the - I agree with him incidentally - blatantly manipulated budget data, he has lost some of his hard-won credibility; second, by reacting so vehemently, my immediate inference is that he expected something better. Doh! As we all know, ask 50% of the people and they'll tell you America, burdened with massive consumer debt, is going to hell in a handcart. The other 50% think the sun will shine eternally on the Union. Somewhere between the 2 views is a median, but it is anybody's guess where that is. In short, there really aren't that many truly effective leaders able to take a long-term view of the future for a large organisation, let alone a whole country, and thus politicians are, on the whole, no more able than the rest of us. If someone told me I had to cut a $500bn deficit, AND make the pension outlook bomb-proof, I wouldn't know where to start. But if someone was to offer me the chance...
posted by Jambutty at 3:06 pm
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