Dancing on Pins

“We are all balloons dancing in a world of pins,” noted Sir Anthony Montague Browne, one of Winston Churchill’s private secretaries. That seems to describe our economic condition. Share prices drop like stones in response to actions by Greek civil servants, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an Israeli attempt to enforce its blockade against Hamas terrorists, or rumors that the Chinese regime is attempting to slow its economy. And then soar when Spain manages to borrow a few billion from unwary investors. Uncertainty is the order of the day.

Which makes life difficult for economic forecasters, who are more comfortable basing their effusions on non-random, hard data that point in one direction. That happy circumstance is denied to them.