Someone Please Tell the Financial Fortunetellers That Most People Have Enough on their Plate

While an ever-increasing share of the world’s population struggles just to get by every day, there is always some expert who willingly explains to us what will happen over the next week, the next months, the next year. From his well-paid position behind the brokers’ table, inside the palatial banks or property corporations, they provide an inexhaustive flood of analyses.

Spinning the wheel of fortune

On a daily basis, they provide us with their answers to the development on the housing market and the share market, before moving on to analyzing currency fluctuations and interest rates, in order to finish off with a punch or two against the oil market.

Or, well, finish off. They don’t. There is always a journalist looking for the oracles who are ready with their recommendations at hand, whatever prognoses one may be asking for.

And on the next day, even a quite different answer.

Or a different social economist who has spun the lucky wheel, which this Friday landed on dropping house prices, whereas the very same houses last week provided a safe harbor, as it is often referred to in financial language. At least for those who have a house.

Quay loosened from the boat

The quay must thus have been loosened from the boat, which instead behaves like a pirate ship chasing homeowners’ savings, which are safely placed in a much-needed house.

These are often the very same professionals who, before interest rates dropped, recommended we get a fixed interest rate on our loans as there was no way in which loans would be cheaper than now.

But well. They could, as it turned out.

The share market, some argue, is the place in which to make a good deal, though a few days later the place where shares proliferated now rather resembles a battlefield.

And while I write this, stock exchanges are on the rise again, at least by a few points, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, as Donald Trump has once again aired his Twitter account in infection-free, responsibility-free and digital environments.

War gives hope

He has ordered the military to fire at Iranian ships, and thus lit a ever-so-modest hope on analysts’ tables. A war may come in handy, in particular when the crisis is aimed towards an oil-producing country.

Trump’s Twitter account hangs like a portrait painting around the computers of the fortunetellers. They are mostly men. Men clinging to the president’s message as if his messages had any other value but clarifying the image of a politician who has had his own mirror reflection as his personal superhero all his life.

Outside the wide-open doors of the fortunetellers, families with kids, company bosses, workers and everyone else struggle to piece together a life in quarantine, unemployment or on temporary layoffs. They struggle to save their shop or restaurant, their house, cabin or ski lift, and the barely have a choice when it comes to stock funds and interest rates.

So why cannot the fortunetellers turn off the light in their crystal balls for a little while? Admit that they do not have a clue right now? Say that it is impossible to say something sensible about a pandemic of which no one knows the outcome?

They just keep pouring out

Instead of pouring out as if we had all suddenly been invited to the Wharton seminar organized by the new president of the Norwegian State Oil Fund, Nicolai Tangen.

Or they could tell us that their stream of speech hides a fear for their own position.

For stockbrokers, it is about their risk-free provision disappearing if another influencer manages to convince us that it is better to buy houses than shares right now.

For real estate brokers, the situation is opposite – it is about maintaining optimism in their market, not chasing their customers into another market.

The way banks would lose money if we were to stop taking up loans and instead took out our savings to refurbish our flats or buying new boats.

It is a round dance in which fortunetellers pray for their sick mother, if one can put it like that.

Not that I do not want economists who can say something substantial, something lasting about the economic forecast for countries and for the world. But they do not exist. Not now.

They did not exist during the 2008 financial crisis, and they do not exist when political and economic consequences of the pandemic sneak around in our lives. To most of us, throwing ourselves into a speculation-based economy based on advice we receive on every channel is barely imaginable right now.

Consolation from Trump

There is a future ahead, but before that, our energy provider and insurance company want their money.

And the final sum on their bills is self-explanatory, just as it is not affected by pandemics nor crystal balls.

Those who, probably with good reason, claim that we of the press also have a lot of opinions about things we do not really know, will find support in one of the latest tweets from Donald Trump:

“It is amazing that I became President of the United States with such a totally corrupt and dishonest Lamestream Media going after me all day, and all night. Either I’m really good, far better than the Fake News wants to admit, or they don’t have nearly the power as once thought!”

Have a great weekend.

This commentary was originally published in Norwegian and has been translated by HNN's Elisabeth Bergquist.