{"id":9290,"date":"2015-06-21T07:26:39","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T12:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9290"},"modified":"2015-06-21T07:27:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T12:27:24","slug":"9290","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9290","title":{"rendered":"The FOMC Decision \u2013 Studying the Flight of Birds and Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FOMC Decision \u2013 Studying the Flight of Birds and Gold<\/a><\/h3>\n

Federal Open Yawn Committee puts Kremlinologists all over the World to Sleep \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Fed\u2019s monetary policy statement delivered on Wednesday was the non-surprise\/yawn-inducer of the year. Readers can take a look at the trusty\u00a0WSJ statement tracker<\/a>, which reveals that apart from a few minor and unimportant changes, the statement was basically a carbon copy of the last one.<\/p>\n

Not a single dissent mars this bland exercise in bureaucratese, so there isn\u2019t even anything to report on that front. If you have trouble sleeping, reading this statement might be a very good alternative to Valium.<\/p>\n

So did anything noteworthy happen? Well, yes. Apparently market participants believe they have to react to the forecasts of a bunch of bureaucrats who are quite likely among the worst economic forecasters in the world \u2013 and that\u2019s really saying something.<\/p>\n

\"augurs\"Augurs in ancient Rome, observing the behavior of hens.<\/p>\n

The High Priests of Augury<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is widely assumed that it is the job of economists to \u201cmake predictions\u201d. This is actually not the case. The job of making predictions is that of augurs and soothsayers. In fact, modern-day economists strike us as today\u2019s equivalent of the caste of augurs in ancient Rome.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Wikipedia informs<\/a>\u00a0us:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0augur\u00a0was a priest and official in the classical world, especially\u00a0ancient Rome\u00a0and\u00a0Etruria.\u00a0His main role was the practice of\u00a0augury, interpreting the will of the\u00a0gods\u00a0by studying the flight of birds<\/em><\/strong>: whether they are flying in groups or alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of birds they are. This was known as \u201ctaking the auspices.\u201d\u00a0The ceremony and function of the augur was central to any major undertaking in Roman society\u2014public or private\u2014including matters of war, commerce, and\u00a0religion.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis added)<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FOMC Decision \u2013 Studying the Flight of Birds and Gold Federal Open Yawn Committee puts Kremlinologists all over the World to Sleep \u2026 The Fed\u2019s monetary policy statement delivered on Wednesday was the non-surprise\/yawn-inducer of the year. Readers can take a look at the trusty\u00a0WSJ statement tracker, which reveals that apart from a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5728,6564,6563,2085,303,305,4512,6170,2725,1024,6565,861,6428],"class_list":["post-9290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-acting-man","tag-augur","tag-bureaucrats","tag-economists","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-fomc","tag-pater-tenebrarum","tag-predictions","tag-rome","tag-soothsayer","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-wsj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9292,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions\/9292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}