The Long Game
Megan McArdle quotes herself in her post Is Irish Austerity Paying Dividends?:
Related thoughts: whatever events unfold, a lot of pundits who insist on treating whatever has happened in the last five minutes as if they were the final events of the crisis, are going to look like idiots. If Spain ends up in the same place as Ireland, the virulent arguments over Irish austerity are going to look rather silly in retrospect; if Europe's banking system is badly compromised, the model of economic crisis that centers around American bank regulation and monetary policy will be severely compromised; and so forth. Pundits and regulators should both be playing the long game.
I find these twin compulsions deeply bizarre: first that one must have an opinion ready on any given topic, and secondly, that it must be the definitive opinion. Perhaps it is forgivable in terms of metaphysical questions--although, I rather think, usually dangerous--but when it's on an empirical topic, what madness compels a person to chain themselves down to a model when events are unfolding?
Related thoughts: whatever events unfold, a lot of pundits who insist on treating whatever has happened in the last five minutes as if they were the final events of the crisis, are going to look like idiots. If Spain ends up in the same place as Ireland, the virulent arguments over Irish austerity are going to look rather silly in retrospect; if Europe's banking system is badly compromised, the model of economic crisis that centers around American bank regulation and monetary policy will be severely compromised; and so forth. Pundits and regulators should both be playing the long game.
I find these twin compulsions deeply bizarre: first that one must have an opinion ready on any given topic, and secondly, that it must be the definitive opinion. Perhaps it is forgivable in terms of metaphysical questions--although, I rather think, usually dangerous--but when it's on an empirical topic, what madness compels a person to chain themselves down to a model when events are unfolding?