So did anyone else read about the former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff coming out early this week and saying that the worst of the global financial crisis is yet to come and that a major U.S. bank will fail in the next few months? For some reason when I read this article on Fox News it really irritated me. The stock market had just come off of a relatively good week, the overall sentiment from what I can tell is that most people out there think we have hit bottom and we have to just kind of ride this out a bit longer, the dollar is strengthening, and the price of oil is going down; and this guy comes out with a public comment like that. What good does that kind of public statement do other than scare the general public/consumer? Then we see 2 days solid of triple digit losses on Wall Street.
Let's take a look at who Mr. Rogoff is. He is the former International Monetary Fund chief economist (as stated above) and is currently an economics professor at Harvard. It has been my experience back in academia that people like him are so self righteous that their judgment becomes too clouded to form rational opinions on real world matters. I am sure he is excellent when it comes to the theory of economics but when it comes to practical applications I think he is falling a little short.
Warren Buffet made some conflicting statements today. He claims the market likely won't improve until 2009 (no surprise, but that says to me it isn't going to get any worse), and Fannie and Freddie are not going to fail. That sounds like a bit of a brighter picture. Warren Buffet has made a lot of money in the financial sector and I trust his real world application opinions much more so than that of Ken Rogoff.
Posted by: David Orsini | Vice President | Top of Mind Networks, a Mortgage CRM company | 404-943-9910
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