
The Worst Predictions About 2008 - epi0Bauqu
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2008/db20081224_028134.htm?campaign_id=rss_topEmailedStories
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mynameishere
There are different grades of advice. Some is free, some costs 24.95 per
month, some costs 6000 per year, some costs much, much more.

Now, Jim Cramer is famous because he is very shrill in his catastrophic
opinions, but they are all playing the same game. One laughable spectacle is
the expensive annual Forbes cruise in which wealthy people pay (I forget how
much) to get stock tips, which are later relayed to the magazine's readers.
This is nothing more than half-assed front running.

Rest assured, however, that ALL FREE PREDICTIONS are merely stage two of a
front running scam.

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jackowayed
I think Madoff's is worst. It's so ironic. While he was executing one of the
greatest financial schemes in history, he was saying that it's impossible to
violate the rules.

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quoderat
The strange thing is, those who made correct predictions like Dean Baker et
al., are marginalized even after they turn out to be correct.

The lesson: There is little penalty for going along with the herd, even if you
are wrong, but there are consequences to being correct if you violate the herd
norms.

Always being a contrarian would more often be right than the opposite, it
seems -- especially lately.

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alexandros
It's incredible to me how anyone gets away with doing predictions without a
corresponding article like this afterwards documenting their (lack of)
success. We only hear about predictions when they are accurate.

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byrneseyeview
[http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-
USUS300US304&...](http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-
USUS300US304&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=famous+predictions)

It looks like these search results feature either bad predictions, or mixed
good and bad predictions.

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puzzle-out
Given how 2008 turned into the year of false predictions, I wonder how this
will influence the development of predictive search? "You are looking for a
new television" as a question rather than statement?

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gaius
#4 for example isn't so much of a prediction as a statement of what is
happening now.

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minor_thread
hard to tell which one of these is the most frightening, though bernanke's
might take the cake

