The other day, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (proudly?) published a report entitled The World in 2050 that predicted the global economic development of the next forty years. From the sensational but stupefyingly brainless title of the report, one would expect the author to be a provincial moneylender with ill-founded global ambitions. In fact, HSBC is already a global powerhouse, but its status has obviously not imbued it with sense or reason. It's not that the report is preposterous or hubristic. It's plain and simple a big load of crap.
How do you predict the next forty years? Answer: You don't. It's impossible. HSBC concedes that its economic projections are based on a "rather rosy scenario", but they're nothing of the sort. They're cerebral manure, based on nothing but hot air, and calling them economic predictions gives them credibility where none is due. What you and me very sensibly avoid reading is simply verbal pollution.
A thought experiment should make this clear. Imagine the world forty years ago, in 1970. Oil was cheap, Russia balanced the United States, former colonies were proudly becoming independent states, visions of prosperity hopefully repeated across the African continent. China was a communist backwaters in the midst of its Cultural Revolution. India didn't register with anyone. How's the world going to develop?
It is not the expected and likely events that define our future but the unpredictable disasters that strike out of nowhere, exploding in our faces with no one seeing them coming. The oil crisis put the Gulf countries on the map, the fall of the Berlin Wall rebalanced the world, a bunch of rabid Saudis started the war on terror, and the financial crisis showed how criminally incompetent banks, central, public and private, are. Not one of these events could have possibly been predicted in 1970. The HSBC prediction is also free of anything unexpected and thus free of any value.
Here's my recommendation to those publishing such rubbish and anyone at risk of taking it seriously: Grab a copy of the report, printed on non-glossy paper if possible, and The Black Swan the next time the urge for the loo overcomes you. Retire to the porcelain and read the book. When you're done with your business, mop up the damage with the report and flush it into oblivion, satisfied in the knowledge that it was not entirely without use after all.
Sadly, it is quite possible that HSBC did in fact not publish the report that forms the basis of this post. The blogosphere and newspaper sites feature references and rebroadcasts, but Googling doesn't reveal a primary source. PricewaterhouseCoopers might even have been the originator. Maybe the whole thing is a hoax. That would be unfortunate because everyone can see a bank cook up such nonsense.
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