Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

[FRED]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

Completely agree with your sentiment.

Mish and Schiff are both, in their own way, a product of the finance economy era...a time when almost everyone became conditioned to the belief that the prognostications of financial writers and fund managers warranted a level of attention that was absurd.

Today we live with the residue of that fast diminishing era; and still waste far too much time and internet bandwidth on it...;)

It's fun to be right but learning from errors is more important. Note in iTulip's original Ka-Poom Theory from 1999 the interest rate and inflation chart was wrong. What did it get wrong? As we readily admitted when we reopened iTulip in March 2006, we forecast inflation, which indeed happened in commodities (you like to call it a bubble but it does not fit our definition), but we did not forecast the housing, stocks, commercial real estate, leveraged buy-outs, and other asset price inflations produced by a combination of monetary policy and credit created by CDOs, liquidity from the yen-carry trade, and other financial creativity.

We learned to add the following Second Law of of Economic Forecasting to our model: "Never underestimate government."

The second Ka-Poom chart, the update done in March 2006, reflects that by phase shifting the final Ka-Poom to 2008 - 2014 and increasing both the severity and the duration of the Ka-Poom Cycle owing to the additional debt and currency risk produced by the asset inflation, with the "Ka" disinflation phase running from 2008 - 2010 and the "Poom" inflation phase 2011 - 2014.

Any chance a new asset price inflation can be engineered to cut "Ka' short again? There follows a correlary to the Second Law: "Never overestimate the government." The updated chart from March 2006 remains our model for the process unless evidence appears to contradict it. So far, so good.

[raja]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

Mish and Schiff are doling out investment advice.
If they make you money, good. If they don't, dump them.

From what I read, Schiff has lost his people a lot of money. It doesn't matter if he was partly right, or had good intentions, is inflexible, or whatever. His advice either works . . . or it doesn't, and it apparently doesn't.

[tsetsefly]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

It's fun to be right but learning from errors is more important. Note in iTulip's original Ka-Poom Theory from 1999 the interest rate and inflation chart was wrong. What did it get wrong? As we readily admitted when we reopened iTulip in March 2006, we forecast inflation, which indeed happened in commodities (you like to call it a bubble but it does not fit our definition), but we did not forecast the housing, stocks, commercial real estate, leveraged buy-outs, and other asset price inflations produced by a combination of monetary policy and credit created by CDOs, liquidity from the yen-carry trade, and other financial creativity.

We learned to add the following Second Law of of Economic Forecasting to our model: "Never underestimate government."

The second Ka-Poom chart, the update done in March 2006, reflects that by phase shifting the final Ka-Poom to 2008 - 2014 and increasing both the severity and the duration of the Ka-Poom Cycle owing to the additional debt and currency risk produced by the asset inflation, with the "Ka" disinflation phase running from 2008 - 2010 and the "Poom" inflation phase 2011 - 2014.

Any chance a new asset price inflation can be engineered to cut "Ka' short again? There follows a correlary to the Second Law: "Never overestimate the government." The updated chart from March 2006 remains our model for the process unless evidence appears to contradict it. So far, so good.

My rule is never underestimate what the government will do but dont overestimate what the consequences of that might be.

I actually was surprised when I read that Itulip revamped its position because they hadn't accounted for the government doing exactly what they weren't suppose to do... thats always a given in mind...

[FRED]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

My rule is never underestimate what the government will but dont overestimate what the consequences of that might be.

I actually was surprised when I read that Itulip revamped its position because they hadn't accounted for the government doing exactly what they weren't suppose to do... thats always a given in mind...

Show me a clear forecast of ASSET price inflation in 2001. We got the commodity price inflation right, but that ASSET price inflation wrong. Who predicted the housing bubble in 2000?

[tsetsefly]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

Show me a clear forecast of ASSET price inflation in 2001. We got the commodity price inflation right, but that ASSET price inflation wrong. Who predicted the housing bubble in 2000?

I dont know, schiff maybe??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24
I was just commenting on the:

We learned to add the following Second Law of of Economic Forecasting to our model: "Never underestimate government."

but that brings up another point, if someone would of known at the time that the fed would continue its easy money policy, was there enough information at the time to know it was going to go into housing? in other words, that housing would be the next bubble?

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

I dont know, schiff maybe??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24
I was just commenting on the:


but that brings up another point, if someone would of known at the time that the fed would continue its easy money policy, was there enough information at the time to know it was going to go into housing? in other words, that housing would be the next bubble?

Isolate all the housing stocks and look at charts on them from the late nineties. It would I believe argue that people should be looking at the markets and not necessarily be latching onto various punditry.

[GRG55]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

Mish and Schiff are doling out investment advice.

Ostensibly that is what they are doing.

But I sense the two are actually quite different animals and perhaps peddling something else.

Mish seems motivated by a genuine interest to examine everything going on in the world through an economic prism. I have read enough of his output to believe that he works very diligently to break down todays complex and interrelated events into their primary colours. I don't know how he supports this habit, but presumably he needs to attract traffic to his website to support the ad revenues or something along those lines?

Schiff is a relentless promoter because he sells books and broker services. Note how often in every interview he urges viewers to "read my book". Nothing wrong with that, and doubtless the motive behind his public response to Mish's analysis. After all it directly threatens his livelihood.

I called them both products of the FIRE economy era because I cannot imagine either of them making a decent living, doing what they do today, a generation or two before FIRE. One more inviolate rule of "economics"...Darwin was right. As the casualties mount with the destruction of FIRE v.2, natural selection will ensure the survivors are best-of-breed. Whether Mish or Schiff are among them, only time will tell.

The danger for us is not the potential extinction of iTulip, but more likely voluntary euthanization...a taste of which long time members of this site have already apparently had once before

[c1ue]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

Mish seems motivated by a genuine interest to examine everything going on in the world through an economic prism.

Substitute 'deflation' for 'economic' and you'll be closer to the truth. Better yet - 'money supply'.

Mish has done some good - much as a bull in a china shops does some good in cleaning up stale inventory - but unfortunately it is only possible to go so far beating up patsies.

A good example was his 'analysis' of BLS adjustments to unemployment. Yes, maybe the first hundred times there were people who didn't know that the birth/death model modifies actual numbers.

But never once did Mish even relate that the reason this model exists is to smooth out the numbers. The purpose of the model is exactly to distort the results so that it would be less volatile.

At the end of the day, just a demagogue.

Even worse - a demagogue shilling for a fund. Apparently not self respecting enough to stick with ideals.

For that matter is Mish the actual strategist behind Sitka Pacific? This has never been clear yet is strongly implied. What exactly is his role in that company?

[Supercilious]

Re: Schiff/Mish............It WAR!

I called them both products of the FIRE economy era because I cannot imagine either of them making a decent living, doing what they do today, a generation or two before FIRE. One more inviolate rule of "economics"...Darwin was right.

I believe you are absolutely right here. I couldn't have said it better.

As the casualties mount with the destruction of FIRE v.2, natural selection will ensure the survivors are best-of-breed. Whether Mish or Schiff are among them, only time will tell.

Yup. The whole class will be severely reduced. Of course there will be some survivors from this class. First will survive only the best analysts and, on the other side of the spectrum, the most shameless bulshiters. Then, from this category will survive only those who will be able to adapt to the new paradigm (I hope you do realize that even in the future we will still have business/investment advice bulshiters , we have no chance to get rid of them)

The danger for us is not the potential extinction of iTulip, but more likely voluntary euthanization...a taste of which long time members of this site have already apparently had once before

You know that I'm a person very cautious in extending praises, but so far I believe iTulip is quite well positioned for the new paradigm shift. I'm talking about a change in the method of processing and analyzing the information.

Right now, it seems the next model is that of the open community where there is a central personality (or a central nucleus of professionals) that attract a community of volunteers/subscribers/information_consumers and the mutual benefit is generated by the interaction between the center and the community surrounding it. As in any creative process (I'm talking about value creation) there has to be a dynamic balance of agreement and disagreement. This is not new exactly as the jet engine was not exactly new when the first Boeing 707 was produced.

Of course the smartest and most valuable central figures (or central nucleus ) will, inevitably, attract the smartest and most valuable community (with respect to numbers and individual quality). For example, the moment when Fred allowed the discussion about financial astrology on bart's forum, that, in my books, was a test passed by iTulip with flying colors with respect to adaptability. (and that is just one of the example which I chose only because it's well known)

It's the same story with the top blogs. Whenever I read an entry made by Yves Smith I hallways go through all the readers comments, because quite often I find there exceptional information posted there. Same with Brad Setser, Michael Pettis etc.