英文速读料金融时报.docVIP

辞旧迎新的时候，人们为何总期望经济学家做预测呢？预测成绩怎样？这是FT卧底经济学家蒂姆·哈福德有趣的解答。 测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识： insatiable 贪得无厌的；不知足的 impunity 不受惩罚，免责 dissenter 持异见者 “25 standard deviation” 高盛公司的首席财务官大卫·维尼亚在2007年8月对FT说，他的员工看到市场上出现了“好几天25个标准差”的现象。伦敦商学院教授丹尼尔森估测高盛公司已经好几天遭到了史无前例的惨重损失。这大概每多少年才出现一次呢？文章中给出了数字。 bloviation 长篇大论 psephology 选举学 Exhibit A 【法律】证据甲(当庭首先出示的或主要的证据，也指重要的人证或 An insatiable desire to peer into the futureThe wonderful thing about forecasts is that they all sound very profound--------------------------It’s that time of year again. Time for you to make your predictions for 2013.You’re kidding, right? You’re asking an economist for predictions?Just my little joke. But surely you’re not a proper economist if you can’t make a few predictions. Isn’t that the whole point of the economic profession – to make dozens of mutually contradictory forecasts with impunity?Well, the impunity is a topic worth discussing. But the economics profession could do with a few more disagreements, I think. In 1995, FT columnist John Kay examined the record of British economic forecasters from 1987 to 1994. He discovered that they tended to all say much the same thing. The only dissenter was reality: economic growth often fell outside the range of all 34 forecasts.So economists are terrible forecasters. What else is new?It isn’t just economists who are terrible forecasters. Take the quantitative analysts responsible for Goldman Sachs’s notorious “25 standard deviation” episode – presumably physicists or mathematicians.25 standard deviation?At the beginning of the financial crisis, the chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs explained that the firm was seeing “25 standard deviation moves, several days in a row” – a statement that, translated into English, means “according to our models, what we’re seeing is very unlucky”.How unlucky?Oh, the sort of bad luck you see once every 28, 900, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000