Food and Thoughts

We went to a luncheon today thrown by our brokerage firm. The guest speaker was the chief economist of their sister firm. He was very good at explaining where we had been and why he thought we would be okay going forward. No doomsday scenarios from him.

So although we enjoyed his presentation (the food not so much) we left wondering what other economists would say using their own data. If there's one thing we've learned about economists is that if one says A another will say B and still others will go for C, D, etc. I love the old expression there are lies, damn lies and statistics. And you know economists live and die by statistics.

So what did we take away from our lecture? I'm not sure. My cynicism about the economic mess we're in today has me watching mostly from the sidelines. I still want to see the perpetrators of the financial bust go to jail but I doubt they will. They're too busy cashing bonus checks.

We all appreciated our speakers' sincerity and acumen. No doubt the man knows his stuff. But applying stuff to a slide presentation isn't exactly the same as applying it to real life.

We spoke briefly with our host broker later and after discussing this and that we agreed that all commerce runs on greed. Are we happy about that? Doesn't matter. It's the way the world muddles through.