tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11902575.post7684727792410613225..comments2023-06-09T15:56:09.681+01:00Comments on Wargle: Some thoughts on Ireland's financial woes.Fergal Dalyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05129705901261680877noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11902575.post-91280168158598096482010-02-02T04:30:37.189+00:002010-02-02T04:30:37.189+00:00I reckon the economy is fundamentally unpredictabl...I reckon the economy is fundamentally unpredictable. Sometimes there are huge technological leaps that drive it and sometimes technology gets stalled. Who could have predicted in the 1960's that the jet air-craft that we now use 50 years later are almost identical to what they had then. <br /><br />In 1755 when there was a great earth-quake in Lisbon, religious leaders told people that their sins had caused it. If they had been much more honest they would have said that the did not know the cause. We're still not good at predicting earth-quakes, but we do at least have some understanding of plate-tectonics. <br /><br />The problem is we don't want to listen to people who say "I don't know". Even if they are the wise ones, we don't learn anything from them. Thus the economists who said a number of years ago that the future is very unpredictable were utterly ignored. <br /><br />There were of course economists who said that Ireland was going to have a property bust, such as in The Economist magazine. But they're not always right. They've been predicting a property bust in the UK for the last decade which simply hasn't happened. <br /><br />It is easy to look back now and say that it was inevitable that we were going to have a collapse. In a way that is true, in the same way that it was inevitable that last week's lotery winner was always going to win.Nelnikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07661695119460541780noreply@blogger.com