Angelo
Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
They are telling us it’s bad, very bad, and
they’ve been saying so since the beginning of the decade. The
economists.
They
were used to the recession cycles at the beginning of each decade
because recessions happened in the 1970s, 1980s and
1990s.
Since
the beginning of the new millennium they have told us that a
recession was around the corner. Instead, we had seven years of a
booming economy.
They
also told us that the parity of the loonie with the greenback was
not going to happen in our lifetime and the price of gas was heading
towards the $150 U.S. a barrel by the end of the
year.
“Definitely,”
a well-known economist told me some time ago, “we have some problems
in predicting the past.” Yes, he was right.
Did you ever see a projection about governments’ surpluses or
deficits materialize? Paul Martin didn’t get one right because, they
were saying, he was “prudent” and politically astute. What about
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty? The numbers in his budgets resemble
the arrivals/ departures board of some airlines: used only to
calculate the delays.
Privately,
economists are no different. How many times do you read in the
newspapers that the chief economist of said financial institution
believes that “the economy is in trouble because last month fewer
jobs were created than we were expecting?” Oh, yeah? Are they
telling us that “the economy is in trouble” this month because they
made the wrong projections on job creation last month? Lately, even
the authoritative Bank of Canada is issuing “revised projections”
every month and many financial institutions are adjusting their
projections (on an almost weekly basis) of what happened in the
past.
The
most entertaining statements I often read in the papers sounds like
the following: “The chief economist of blah-blahblah, told us that
by the year 2038 the Canadian auto industry will shed 135,250 jobs.”
Wow, they don’t know what will happen next week, but can predict
things 30 years away with such precision: 135,000 and 250
jobs.
An old bricklayer once told me that when he first arrived in
Canada he didn’t speak the language and his math skills were not
very good; nonetheless, when he was giving his estimate he was
always writing numbers like $534.36.
“Not
that I was making any calculation but writing the cents on the bill
would make me look more professional,” he
said.
Another interesting statement, even though less entertaining,
is about the price of gas. How many times do we wake up in the
morning and learn that the price of a litre of gas is up five cents
overnight? Immediately the experts explain: because “Hurricane
Johnny” is going to strike an area where there are refineries and if
they’re damaged there’s going to be a shortage of gas. For two or
three days, we pay five cents more only to learn later that no,
“Johnny” was not that bad. Are they giving us the money back? Nope,
but the price of gas goes down .3 cents. And they are creative in
finding reasons to create havoc in the energy sector: there is the
war in Nigeria, a bomb scare in Namibia, or the unexpected sneezing
of the minister of finance of an Arab emirate.
By
the way, they also predicted a $1.5 per litre for the gas by the
summer (I mean last summer).
Not
to mention the politicians.
Do you remember when prime minister Stephen Harper, during
the campaign was saying that the problems were serious but we had
the basics to weather the storm? And do you remember when the
Liberals were accusing him of not being in touch with the pain
Canadians were enduring? Now John McCallum, an
economist-turned-politician, is attacking Harper because “his
pessimistic talk makes a bad situation worse.” There is a lot of
confusion out there; for example I don’t understand why the Canadian
dollar goes down “because the American economy took a turn for the
worst.” I understand we depend on them, but why does the American
dollar go up if the American economy goes down? They would give many
explanations and I understand that many of the economic parameters
are no longer valid.
Now
they’re telling us we’re on the brink of a global economic
disaster.
It
might be true, but can we trust them? You know what? Let’s talk
about it in a few months. In the meantime let’s enjoy the holiday
season as much as we can.
