Whatever it may be, the date of peak oil, market tops and bottoms, unemployment peaks, etc., people seem to love calling it. I realize that if you call it right, in hindsight you will look like a fucking genius and all, but most likely you will just be another idiot calling it wrong. I suppose that is the result of people wanting to know. And by people, I mean dumb people. I don’t know how or why people can be invited on news programs and asked questions that basically boil down to “can you predict the future?” The answer should be simple, but one word answers don’t fill much time for cable networks. Since the pundits won’t honestly answer the question, I will do it for them:

No one can, and no one will predict the future. The notion that no one is psychic is pretty widely accepted in our society, yet we lend our ear to any number of people ranging from decent honest folks to despicable liars that are willing to tell us what they think the future will be like.

I happen to like Peter Schiff (of Euro Pacific Capital) and he is now famous for calling the housing bubble in the US. He is also famous for calling things that have not happened, and calling things wrong that already happened. This does not have any impact on why I like him. I like him because I think he communicates without the type of double-speak that a lot of his ilk are infected with. I make no illusions about his overall accuracy and I do not turn to him for investment advice – mainly because you can’t invest money unless you have it or you are a major bank. I think history will prove him right over time on many things if we are in the twilight of economic growth. Of course, the ridiculousness of investment strategy that a whole portion of our society has become obsessed with will become painfully obvious if he is right.

I also like Ken Deffeyes who has written a couple of books about peak oil that are very informative. Ken has also predicted the peak in oil production seven times. Each time oil production has proven him wrong. That doesn’t take anything away from what he wrote in his books “Beyond Oil”. It does show that a career in geology does not make you able to predict the future – no matter how many graphs you produce or numbers that reference.

The saying goes that even broken clocks are right twice a day. So inevitably people like Schiff and Deffeyes will be right. But, if they have predicted wrong so many times by the time that they are right, then what good does it do? In my view it does no good at all. They can say things that are right. Oil production will peak. The value of the dollar will fall. The United States will no longer be the dominant economic force in the world. All of these types of predictions are right. The problem is timing. The future is a noisy and uncertain state. Due to this problem there is no telling what the future will be like after these events unfold.

And asking “experts” what the future will be like and making them call it is as futile as taking advice from the crazy guy on the corner screaming at cars. Embrace uncertainty, and get the fuck over it.

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