There’s a clever form of analyst that knows how to blather out strings of statistics and vomit forth reams of information of a bewildering complexity – and ends up taking no position whatsoever on the likely evolution of the situation they’re speaking about – without seeming to dodge the obvious question.
The blathered string of stats and vomit of info is in fact, methinks, actually designed to so confuse the listener with the supposed complexity of the situation that the question of “Where do things go from here” is never uttered.
Read Also
Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
Then the analyst is able to get out of the situation without taking a position, and is therefore immune to any future assessment.
Some of these analysts simply don’t believe anyone can ever predict anything of value about the future, so they don’t bother. This makes them useless, in practical application, except in providing details and context for others to think about. That makes them somewhat useful.
Others are scared of being wrong, so they don’t let themselves get pinned down. That makes them really useless.
There are others, however, that are often willing to give their view on market direction or some business or social change, but on a certain specific matter will decline to have a view because they truly believe it’s too difficult to predict. This uncertainty is very worthwhile noting, because it reveals situations that truly are fluid, unpredictable, potentially explosive.
That seems to be the situation today with what’s going on in Egypt, and across many countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Analysts who normally are brave enough to make predictions about all manner of things are backing away from predicting anything at all about what’s going to happen there in the present tempestuous climate. Last week I called a number of people about the likely impact of the Egyptian situation on world grain markets, and no one wanted to guess what’s going to happen.
That’s the kind of cop-out that makes sense to me. It’s a non-copout copout because things really are too crazy to predict. Last week the grain markets first shot up on expectation that countries would begin buying lots of crops in order to avoid food-inspired protesting. (Food has been one of the key triggers of the recent unrest, even though it quickly morphs into outrage at the ruling regime). Then they slumped Friday on worries that things would go so badly in Egypt that it wouldn’t be able to import the millions of tonnes of wheat the world has been selling it.
My own experience of trying to predict the future course of societies makes me think that restraint of prediction and copping-out makes sense. I spent a month in Algeria in 1986 and came out thinking it was a model society in which everyone seemed healthy, happy, proud and upright. The children all wore nice, clean, pressed school uniforms and seemed to be happy as they skipped to school in the morning. The police and government officials were incorruptible. People were well-fed and did not beg. Very different from the rest of North and West Africa I visited. And I allowed myself to believe that this society might be some kind of reasonably sustainable middle ground between the advanced liberal democracies and economies of the West, and the dictatorships of the communist world. With such a shining example of general goodness in Algeria, perhaps there was a third way for the developing world to be well-functioning and dignified and not just a vassal of either capitalist West or the communist east. Algeria gave me hope.
A few months after I left Algeria that society tore itself apart in a savage, 15 year civil war in which horrendous bloodshed and massacres became commonplace, in which Islamist fanatics and a repressive military and police force fought to the death and turned Algeria into the most dangerous place on earth. None of which I had any sense of as I passed through those areas just before it happened.
I don’t think I’m alone in being totally clued-out about massive changes that are about to come because of profound currents moving under the surface of society. Last week Hillary Clinton – a hero of mine – declared the government of Egypt as “stable.”
So I can see why the outcome of the situation in Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East is something few want to guess at. And why what it means to the world grain markets is something no analyst wanted to guess for me.
What’s my guess about what’s going to happen?
No comment.
