Long, Strange Trip

What a year.  First, I'll admit straight out of the gate I was wrong about having a vaccine in Q1.  The lab folks pulled a minor miracle, and we have several.  I was still right about other things, though: 1) We're at the end of Q1 and have barely made a dent on the number of people vaccinated, 2) there is no end in sight for the mess the economy is in regardless of what the stock market is doing, and 3) always verify claims of expertise.

And of course we have had plenty of messes so far this year.  Our worst was 6 January.  It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone, but you must remember that people in general and Americans in particular don't like to notice warning signs.  Everybody was surprised by 9/11 even though everyone knew you could fly a plane into a building without much trouble.  Everyone was surprised by the 2008 recession even though everyone knew what goes up must come down (and had with a vengeance just eight years earlier).  Everyone was surprised by the pandemic even though everyone knows viruses are out there constantly reinventing themselves.  If you refuse to see what's right in front of you, expect to be punched in the nose.  A lot.

Beware Experts Who Aren't

Campbell Harvey, finance professor at the Duke business school, is an expert.  He must be, it says so right on his CV.  He also supposedly has a perfect track record for calling recessions.  He just put that record at serious risk.  He thinks the current economic crater will be over by the end of the year.  And he thinks that largely because he believes the world will know by then that we'll have a vaccine for SARS-COV-2 in Q1 2021.

Folks, there isn't an epidemiologist on Earth who believes we'll have a vaccine that quickly.  The good professor may know a lot about business finance, but he knows so little about epidemiology he doesn't even know how little he knows (See Dunning-Kruger Effect.).  I've helped a few biotech companies get started, but that in no way makes me an expert in research pathology.  So the next time some supposed expert starts giving an opinion, do what we do in court (or at least what we're supposed to do in court): Determine whether the opinion fits within the expert's field of expertise.  If it doesn't, you might as well be getting an opinion from the next person you meet on the street.  Or one of my cats.  Probably the brain-damaged one.

Experts Agree Everything is Fine

These people get paid for these opinions?  A bevy of local experts has met and concluded that SLC will face no more than an economic bump and will soon be right as rain.  They quickly gloss over the vacant lots, vacant storefronts, and aging "For Lease" and "For Sale" signs.  They focus on all the construction cranes downtown.  Never mind that there is no logical connection between the LDS Church's ability to build City Creek and merchant's and consumers' abilities to populate it.  Of course one of these "experts" is Frank Gray who has been completely outflanked on the Sugarhouse pit fiasco by Craig Mecham, who isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, so logical conclusions shouldn't be expected.  In the mean time, the county's revenue projections are down nearly $11 million due to the economy.  Yeah, that sounds fine to me.

If you're in business, there are times when you need experts: an accountant here, a lawyer there, an HR adviser some other time.  When it comes to determining if you have enough business, though, or what your customer traffic is going to look like when half the tenants in your shopping plaza go dark, you are the expert, and if someone tells you things are fine when you know otherwise, turn down the sound.

No Recession?

I read this morning that the Wall Street Journal, quoting experts of course, thinks we've headed off the recession. How's that again? I'm reminded of a poster of a '50s-style family gathered around the TV while the talking head says, "Experts agree everything is fine." Bankruptcies are up, foreclosures are up, repossessions are up, unemployment claims are up, food stamp use is up, and people are using their credit cards to buy bread, but we're OK. Who is "we"?

People, just because everything (And I mean everything. Food, fuel, goods, services, debt, equity, realty.) has been turned into investment vehicles and those vehicles have been hijacked by day-trading speculators who are currently pumping them doesn't mean everything is fine. It just means The Great and Powerful Oz is telling you to ignore the man behind the curtain.