The New York Times-20080126-Taking the Bears to Task

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Taking the Bears to Task

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ON Monday, Barry Ritholtz, the chief executive of the research firm Fusion IQ and the author of the popular blog the Big Picture, criticized what he called the Long and Wrong crowd -- people who insist on remaining positive about the markets and the economy.

What is rather incredible about the past few years, he wrote, is the number of pinheads who so totally got this wrong. What really stunned me is the number of otherwise intelligent people who, once again, claimed it's different this time.

For Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and author of the blog Infectious Greed, Mr. Ritholtz represents the unrelenting pessimism and negativity of financial bloggers. I have no problem with bearishness, he wrote, and a good deal of it is warranted right now.

But, he added, most financial blogs and the people who comment on them offer a relentless and somewhat bizarre mixture of Calvinist moralizing and noisy negative triumphalism.

Also far too negative, according to Mr. Kedrosky, is Herb Greenberg, the columnist and blogger at Marketwatch.com. Mr. Greenberg, in a post on Tuesday about the mortgage market, asserted that things were likely to get far worse before they get better. Even if rates once again fall to boom-era levels, he wrote, credit standards have tightened to the point that even a hefty tablespoon of sugar won't help the medicine go down.

The mainstream media is also far too pessimistic, according to Tom Blumer, a blogger for Pajamas Media, a right-leaning Web site. On Tuesday, he quoted a routine dispassionate Reuters report about huge drops in stock index futures before the markets opened. The report, which indicated that the coming trading day might see big losses, amounted to icing the champagne for the late afternoon, he wrote -- a typical case of the media's seeking to party hearty on bad news.

That day, the Dow fell 465 points after the opening bell, then recovered somewhat as it digested the news of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut, closing down 128 points.

BACK FROM THE FUTURE

The Atlantic has made access to its Web site free, and in introducing the enhanced site, highlighted a 2005 article by James Fallows in which he looks back from 2016 at a long-building economic collapse.

The article is written in the form of a memo from a campaign manager to his candidate -- who is sure to win even though he belongs to neither of the major parties.

Mr. Fallows cites unsustainable debt levels and the continuing shift of manufacturing to China as reasons the jobless recovery of the early 2000s became the jobless collapse that occurs several years later.

He gets at least one thing wrong (so far), however: he has the Republican majority in the Senate making the Bush tax cuts permanent in 2008.

FOR YOUR SHOPPING LIST

On Amazon, you can buy uranium ore that the seller says is useful for testing Geiger counters. Further, it is safe and complies with all regulations. One product reviewer, however, warned, it's not cat food and asked, Does anyone know if there's a cure for sudden tentacles?

The ore is one of 10 Things You Did Not Know You Could Buy on Amazon.Com, presented by Madconomist.com. Others include a land cruiser/tank and a George W. Bush Voodoo Kit. The latter item was apparently on Amazon until recently, but now the site says it is no longer available. Hmm.

Complete links are at nytimes.com/business. E-mail: [email protected].

[Illustration]DRAWING (DRAWING BY JOEL CASTILLO)