It's the Economist, stupid
Something to remember as you read all the upcoming prediction stories for 2009 -- these are almost always all wrong, bass-ackwardly so. But The Economist (yes, Sarah Palin's favorote magazine) set a new bar for getting it wrong with its 2008 predictions. Check this out:
For 23 years, The Economist has issued bold predictions for the coming year in its thick December special issue. Last year, its crystal ball, in the issue called “The World in 2008,” was a little foggy.
“About 2008: sorry,” reads a note from the issue’s editor, Daniel Franklin, in the prediction edition for 2009. Who would have seen the financial crisis coming, Mr. Franklin asked? “Not us. The World in 2008 failed to predict any of this,” he said.
He listed a long series of other missed predictions, including oil prices, Canadian army movements, Italian government changes and Russian military policy. “Oh, and we expected that by now Hillary Clinton would be heading for the White House,” Mr. Franklin wrote.
This short New York Times article raises more questions than it answers. Seriously, there were people who saw the economic crisis coming. And oil prices...did they not predict them going way up or going way down, since both happened in 2008. But the real head-scratcher is "Canadian army movements."
Huh?!!! Were they expecting a rear-guard action against North Dakota? Somebody's been watching too many old John Candy movies: