The prediction didn’t work out so well—so far. Hindsight compresses time. Things said in 2004 and 2005 definitely bubbled up to the top after Lehman’s collapsed

The prediction didn’t work out so well—so far. Hindsight compresses time. Things said in 2004 and 2005 definitely bubbled up to the top after Lehman’s collapsed in ‘08 as “correct predictions of the coming financial crisis.” If things implode tomorrow or six months or even a year from now everyone will look back at that Krugman quote and say, “The man’s a damn genius, he totally called it.” It’s easy to forget about the time period when a financial prediction was wrong before it was right, particularly when the magnitude of disruption is significant. Sometimes the time even emboldens the former position because “they knew all along.” The one thing we do know is that markets are cyclical. There is always another crisis lurking around the corner. If you went to a cash position the day after Trump was elected you seem like a fool today. You can wake up a financial genius tomorrow. Maybe you didn’t sell at the top, but people who got out of real estate in 2005 probably don’t look back with too much regret saying, “should have hung in there another two years.”