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Is The Economist Always Wrong?

Is The Economist Always Wrong?

nreece

Comments (125)

  • papaver-somnamb
    After reading their newspaper (their label, not mine) for years, I've come away with three revelations: A) More than gaining insight and staying abreast of events, what I was really purchasing was the /feeling/ of being in-the-know. B) Whenever I met with "certain" people, they were likely to also read The Economist which turned out to be another, tremendously handy means of anchoring conversation. C) The trade balance tables on the inside back page were always interesting, sometimes jaw-dropping.
  • drumhead
    They're wrong and right in equal measure, but what they do is publish their opinions with conviction and back it up with sound arguments and facts. I remember reading articles they published in the late 80s about their belief that Japans economic boom was about to end, but they were also one of the biggest backers of Bush's invasion of Iraq which they were disastrously wrong about. I haven't read it for a while so I don't know what they're like now but for forward economic intelligence they were always one of the best.
  • ggm
    I'd love to know if "the pink" has the same problem because I used to find the editorial very good. As a non-investor, left leaning voter, it interested me that I found much to agree with in "the financial times" while still finding much to disagree with in "the times" and "the daily telegraph" and "the spectator" -as if money was more neutrally stanced on left-vs-right.
  • claw-el
    The tricky thing about predictions made by public entity or persona is that, the fact that they are making public predictions creates a major influence on the outcome itself. People react to predictions made by them.
  • ImageXav
    I read the Economist for over a decade growing up. It was a great way to learn about the world, who was in power where, and the challenges facing economies at the time. I found their exposition to be pretty good given the fact they were restricted to a few pages for important events. However, their proposed solutions were always the same. More market freedom, etc.I did feel with the change in editorial direction a while back that they lost some of their edge. I've since mostly just stuck to the Financial Times. It feels less worldly, but the content of the articles feels better.
  • ankit_mishra
    > We used artificial intelligence to test the accuracy of our forecastsI like the disclosure at the top, saves time.
  • latch
  • zippyman55
    I have a hard time passing on the economist. Best reading out there that is condensed and to the point. The FT is great but I’m a paper guy and the font got too small to enjoy it.
  • andsoitis
    Prior discussion 70+ comments (2 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48791799
  • diego_sandoval
    They're wrong more often than random chance, yes.
  • JR1427
    I used to read it every week, and always liked the fact they stated their biases upfront - "This newspaper believes XYZ".Now I just live under a rock, and don't read any news.
  • mdp2021
    It is shocking that idle bets, nothing but after dinner games, are confused with assessments. It is not too different from confusing opinions and arguments in debates.If you predict an event E the juice is in the reasons that make it possible, and in the hurdles and dynamics that might make that not happen. (That is especially bewildering as it disregards the influence of the paper, as if separated from the world it comments about.)
  • mjt91
    Think of subscribing, anyone experience reading the economist on a kindle?
  • givemeethekeys
    They don't have any real skin in the game.Who cares if they're right about something? Are they putting money on the line? What is their P/L for being "right"?
  • doe88
    An outgoing foreign affairs editor suggested in 1988 that the newspaper ‘never saw a war it didn’t like’. 𐞸𐞸 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/05/27/book-rev...𐞸 Maybe outdated regarding the later conflicts (tbh i don't know, i didn't follow their positions on the Ukraine and the Middle-East wars).
  • tedmiston
    > Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
  • anon
    undefined
  • jdw64
    I think the question was wrong. The problem is that the important things are wrong and the trivial things are right, which causes confusion.
  • ChrisArchitect
  • roughly
    The Economist has been publishing since 1843. As such, one could be forgiven for expecting an article entitled "Is The Economist Always Wrong?" to engage meaningfully with the track record of either the publication or the field with which it shares its name in any meaningful way. Alas.> To assess our record with something approaching neutrality, we took the 7,000 or so leaders The Economist has published this millennium and fed them into GPT-5.5, an artificial-intelligence model."This millennium" is 26 years old. This millennium is still getting charged extra for renting a car. This millennium never saw the Soviet Union. This millennium never used a payphone, doesn't know what a collect call is, and doesn't know why you might need to make one.This millennium is also entirely, utterly, absolutely defined by the short-sighted ideas of the economist.
  • iamanllm
    there should be some law where publications have to track their brier scores
  • menachemsd
    By making this headline, the Economist put us into a paradox. Quite clever
  • Insanity
    Betteridge's law of headlines :)
  • nnurmanov
    We will never know as the article is behind a paywall:)
  • rohitsriram
    [flagged]
  • fp_hub
    [flagged]
  • skywhopper
    Wow. “We asked the wrong question and used the wrong tool to get a questionable answer, and then decided to publish it.” I guess the answer is yes?
  • Simpledempkin
    Bernie's mittens of Fire can roundturn to Biden as dab-brushes, the economist can arrange for a formal hearing for Iowa caucuses as letters to Lagrange as first claim.
  • m348e912
    Here is a mirror of the article without a paywall.https://archive.is/FziAyThe Economist is partly owned by the Rothschild dynasty and was chaired by Evelyn de Rothschild for 17 years, so I've always just assumed it is going to tell you whatever would favor the global elite banking class.
  • lalitium
    Please don't put anything with the paywall here.
  • SanjayMehta
    Yes, because they lie all the time.
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF
    They aren't great on transgender topics I hear
  • davidw
    After subscribing for 15 years or so, I noped out after their "walker" cover. The world has enough "both sides" journalism, and I had thought them somewhat immune from that.