Tossing Coins

From the OC Register, we have Mathew Padilla talking about As buyers balk, builders carry on.

There's a 50-50 chance the market will still be in the doldrums in 2008, said Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson School of Management's annual economic and housing-market forecast.

50-50?

You might as well have shut your fucking pie-hole, and said nothing, O Fucktard of an Economist!

I should explain further since this is something I do for a living.

It's not enough to get something 50% right for events with a binary outcome. Even a random coin toss can achieve that.

Either a stock will go up or down. Either the economy will have a recession in 2008 or it won't.

Your models need to have a slight edge, say being right 51% of the time.

(Mathematicians call it being right "1/2 + epsilon" of the time, and gamblers call it the "edge".)

In short, an inanimate coin can and probably should do this loser's job!