Matt Yglesias

27 Responses to “Unexpected?”

1. Chuck Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:04 am

   Denial is a powerful human instinct. Most of the folks responsible for telling us about these things feel like they’ve got it made and can’t contemplate that the world is changing radically.

   There was that lame book a while back that was trendy – “Who Moved My Cheese”. 800 pages or something to explain to people that sometimes things change and they have to adapt.

2. WillieStyle Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:07 am

   The professional expecters expected 505,000 claims. Instead there were 540,000 claims. Not sure what’s so shocking about that.

3. norbizness Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:13 am

   They only expected a 14-year high.

4. Brent Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am

   They were expecting the jobless claims to soar to a 16-year high, not jump to a 16-year high. A professional expecter would understand this crucial difference.

5. marc h. Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am

   As somebody who has written these things for a living, what matters to the market is not what happens but how it compares with expectations. So it’s basically like how the big-time bloviators evaluate a presidential debate. If it’s true that the difference was between 505,000 and 540,000, then to say they unexpectedly jumped is definitely misleading. I would use the phrase “unexpectedly jumped” only if they had been expected to decline.

   Um, so basically, what Matt said.

6. kforceone Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:34 am

   Igloo, you’re a journalist and you’re decrying hyperbole! I guess….

7. Njorl Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am

   Perhaps they were expecting that many of the newly jobless would not claim that they had lost their jobs.

8. Duncan Kinder Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:42 am

   Can I be made an official expecter of stuff?

   No. That’s one of the jobs that’s been eliminated.

9. RJ Ray Says:
   November 20th, 2008 at 11:59 am

   This post just reminds me of the difference of someone who works in the financial markets and monitors day-to-day developments vs. someone who is much more longer-term and theoretically focused. The mean expectation of a survey of 40 economists from “leading” banks (yes, admittedly not as prestigious a title any longer) yielded 505k and it turned out to be higher. No one is pretending that there wont be a larger than historical number of jobless claims, but a number of seasonal and external factors can change whether its significantly higher or lower than the week before. i think posts like this arent very useful in providing for reasonable debate or making people clear as to what is happening on a daily basis.

10. cs Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    This somehow reminds me of a stand up comedy bit I heard a long time ago. I don’t remember which comedian. He described a newspaper article about a small plane crashing into a hotel. The article said “many of the guests were suprised to be woken up by the plane crash”. The comedian wondered why only many of the guests, and not all of the guests, were surprised, and did an impression of a guest who was expecting a plane to hit the building that morning. It was funny at the time.

11. zic Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    Yes, I so nominate, second, and appoint.

    It’s like the housing bubble. I did a story on the construction industry a few years ago for a regional biz publication, everyone was predicting a bust. I expected a bust; too much building, prices out-stripping incomes by magnitudes. It was only common sense this would happen. How could prices keep going up when wages were stagnant? Maybe the magnitude is surprising, but that’s the derivitives.

12. alan Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    just finishing John Kenneth Galbraiths book “The Great Crash 1929″. Everything then is as it is now. the same pronouncements of the soundness of fundamentals, the shock at increasingly bad economic data, constant pronouncements that the market has bottomed out, or that great bargains are at hand. In fact, in 1930, Rockefeller came out of seclusion to announe that he was personally purchasing stocks as they were now at bargain prices (by 1935 the value of his purchases were less than 10% of what he paid), a la warren buffet. After one meeting with business leaders and hoover in 1930, a crisis of too few workers available was discussed.

    The news is bad, and no one, truly no one is an expert or knows how long or deep this will go (although the look of absolute fear on Paul Krugman’s face everytime he is asked about a bailout or the future is bone chilling). The only consolation is that at least there is fdic, unemployment insurance , social security , etc…

    We will continue to hear shock/surprise at the worsening data, announcements that the fundamentals of our economy are sound, plans made to stimulate the economy, or to prop up stock or housing prices, but I believe that much wealth (home equity and other equity holdings) has been lost (to where and to whom is another story) and it will be a long hard slog just to get back to where we were, and it will be “surprising” how far and how long it will take to get there.

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