I stumbled on this gem earlier today:
“Earlier this year, the Dow had dropped over 5,000 points in 6 months. One of the collective fallacies our culture operates under is the delusion that the market is some kind of astute forecasting machine. It is not — it represents the collective wisdom of 10 million panicked monkeys. That millions of slightly clever, pants wearing primates can combine their collective ignorance, their intellectual foibles, biases and false beliefs somehow into something resembling intelligence was one of the false beliefs of the era. Unfortunately, this is a condition the monkeys are prone towards (Witch burning, bloodletting, organized religion, etc.).”
–How Overrated is Sentiment in Economics?, November 22nd, 2009
The entire discussion is worthwhile . . .
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