Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown, 4th Edition

CHAPTER 13 Our Predictions Have Mostly Been Accurate, So Why Do Some People Still Dislike Them?

Most economists and financial analysts did not foresee the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, and most still do not see the coming Aftershock, nor will they agree with many of the ideas and predictions in this book. How come? Why do most people not see what seems pretty straightforward and obvious to us?

The reasons lie in the six psychological stages of evolving denial we told you about in Chapter 6. We were in the first stage (Denial) for a long time, and more recently we have been in the second stage (Market Cycles), in which most experts believe if we just wait long enough things will get better—in fact, if you try really hard, you can believe things are already getting better right now! What is so compelling about the Market Cycles stage of denial is that it is so comforting. It helps us cope with our anxieties by insisting that all will be well again soon. This comforting stage is being strongly promoted and maintained by both the cheerleaders, who say all is great right now, and the comforters, who, unlike cheerleaders, admit we have problems but say the solution is at hand—or could be if we would just do A, B, or C (none of which will actually save us).

So we have both cheerleaders and comforters hard at work, keeping us from facing facts and really getting prepared for what is ahead. Naturally, both cheerleaders and comforters do not like our books because we are ...