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Financial markets remain blissfully in denial of the many predictable global crises that could come to a head this year, particularly in the months before the US presidential election. In addition to the increasingly obvious risks associated with climate change, at least four countries want to destabilize the US from within.
Now that US Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as a leading contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, his brand of democratic socialism warrants closer scrutiny. Simply put, it is neither a close approximation of the "Nordic model" that Sanders often invokes nor a solution to what ails the American economy.
Every day, experts bombard us with their views on topics as varied as Iraqi insurgents, Bolivian coca growers, European central bankers, and North Korea’s Politburo. But how much credibility should we attach to the opinions of experts?
The sanguine view is that as long as those selling expertise compete vigorously for the attention of discriminating buyers (the mass media), market mechanisms will assure quality control. Pundits who make it into newspaper opinion pages or onto television and radio must have good track records; otherwise, they would have been weeded out.
Skeptics, however, warn that the mass media dictate the voices we hear and are less interested in reasoned debate than in catering to popular prejudices. As a result, fame could be negatively, not positively, correlated with long-run accuracy.
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