A few noble souls have bit the bullet and admitted that their 2008 predictions turned out to be total crap, whilst others have shouldered the burdens of the world, and changed their jobs.

There was much simple pleasure to be derived, for example, from reading John Kemp’s Reuter’s rant on the Fed and its magical bubble machine a couple of weeks ago, secure in the knowledge that John Kemp used to be an economist for RBS Sempra in London, where he was responsible for the company’s forecasts and market analysis on crude oil and products, freight, steel and non-ferrous metals. Indeed, back in August he was helpfully pointing out that “Some people are getting very bullish about lead’s prospects,” though presumably not bullish enough to keep him in the job.

In other words, he knows bugger all about banking, as befits someone who used to work for RBS, but is grappling heroically with the fact that there aren’t much in the way of commodities markets left to work in, much less comment on.

If he’d still been at RBS Sempra he would have had all the thrills of the corporate Christmas knees-up at Madame Tussauds, sorry, private party for staff paid for by the managers out of their own pockets which in no way reflected RBS management’s belief that the taxpayer is just another in the long line of mugs needed to keep them in the style to which they have accustomed themselves.

Instead he poured the agony into a searing condemnation of Greenspan and Bernanke; this is a heart warming story about an economist, and you don’t get many of them to the pound…

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService4/idUSTRE4BG3C920081217