OK, I cannot resist anymore. Here is a wall street joke about economists. A group of interns were doing their daily rounds with the head resident. They stopped at each patients bed, and had the interns review the charts. He then asked each one for a diagnosis of the current condition of each patient.
At the end of the rounds, the head resident turned to the group and picked out one individual. He said, “In all of my years of doing this with all of the groups I have taken through the hospital, we have a record.” As the group fell silent, he continued turning to the young man on his immediate right. This is the first time ever that an intern has mis-diagnosed every single patient in the hospital, have you ever thought of becoming an economist?
I do not know why anyone pays any attention to these guys. The UCLA people have been wrong for years about RE, why would anyone think they would magically now be correct. Maybe Thornberg was that intern? Economists are notorious for being incorrect about predictions, ignore them.
Most of the people in here have a better sense about what is going on than these guys do.
