[mikemike]

A month after Romanian authorities began taxing them for their trade, the country's soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don't come true.

In January, the government changed labor laws to officially recognize the centuries-old practice of witchcraft as a taxable profession, prompting angry witches to dump poisonous mandrake into the Danube in an attempt to put a hex on them.

Romania may get even tougher on witches - Yahoo! News

I think we should hold weathermen equally accountable for their missed forecasts.

Bravo, Romania!!!

[Ratmagiclady]

That's funny, to my experience people usually freak out at you more when you're *right.*

But apply it to economists and stockbrokers, too, and we'll talk.

[Nesster]

Yah, yer right, talk to the stock market predictors:
Gurus are Still Wrong After 80 Years - Rick Ferri - The Indexer - Forbes

For this study, Cowles meticulously collected and analyzed the results from the purveyors of investment advice between 1928 and 1932. His purpose was to determine if these sources of expertise had any real skill in selecting stocks or timing the stock market.

In the first of four studies, Cowles charted the weekly individual stock purchase recommendations of 16 established Wall Street firms from January 1928 to June 1932. There were approximately 7,500 forecasts made during this period.

Cowles calculated the average performance for the 16 firms was 1.4 below the market average. Within the group, six services outperformed the market, one tied the market and nine underperformed. With a win ratio slight better than 35 percent. Cowles concluded that analysts weren’t able to predict the market or pick winning stocks with any degree of accuracy. He further observed that winning forecaster results were no better than that which would have occurred by chance.

You would think today’s analysts would do better given 80 more years of experience making forecasts, information and technology advancements, extensive financial disclosure by corporations and advanced analysis tools. Not so, according to CXO Advisory Group, an independent observer of Wall Street acumen.

CXO has accumulated the public U.S. stock market forecasts of various investing and trading experts for the past several years. With nearly 5,000 measurements for about 60 gurus, including bulls and bears and technicians and fundamentalists, they have achieved a critical mass in assessing the forecasting acumen of the stock market gurus as a group. At time of this writing, 37 underperformed the market, three tied the market, and 20 outperformed. That’s a win rate of only 33 percent.

[Phil1]

"But apply it to economists and stockbrokers, too,...."

Could I add politicians? Just askin.

[jolepp]

"But apply it to economists and stockbrokers, too,...."

Could I add politicians? Just askin.

Punishing them by sacking is supposed to be in the hands of the electorate already?

[Ratmagiclady]

Punishing them by sacking is supposed to be in the hands of the electorate already?

Guess we could always take a 'gallop pole' on it.

[Parallax]

OOPS

Open again. I closed it by mistake.

[reeftool]

The former Eastern Bloc communist countries have finally taken on all the attributes of American politics. They have learned to solve their economic woes by passing stupid laws like this. I suppose next they will issue drivers licenses for brooms, for a hefty fee. In honor of Ronald Regan's 100th, we all should look at this with pride and show the world "Look at what we did!"

[shooz]

Sounds like they need Sarah Palin!

She could give speeches all day about the benefits and lower taxes of a thorough de-witching.

Could we send her there.....please?

[jolepp]

Guess we could always take a 'gallop pole' on it.

I suppose being tied to a pole in a public place is their default punishment, kind of cruel and unusual these days, though?

[JohnInIndy]

Sounds like they need Sarah Palin!

She could give speeches all day about the benefits and lower taxes of a thorough de-witching.

Could we send her there.....please?

Let's send Biden instead. He could tell them how big his deal is. Wait. I mean how big a deal this is and a host of other gaffes.

[Ratmagiclady]

"By Jupiter, Gird. Your. Loins!"

(OK, that wasn't really Biden, but we still love that SNL sketch. )

Not that Biden's 'gaffes' are really anything like Palin's general blather and proud ignorance, or Bush's stumbling illiteracy, ...they have a tendency to be pretty true, for one thing, if insensitively-said.

Course, like I said, people'll freak out more about that. I remember getting in trouble as a young kid when they asked us to predict a news story some round number of years in the future.

Very unfair. They didn't say *Darwin award* material didn't count. (Ask a silly question... )

[shooz]

C'mon, John.

Joe was never de-witched by a VooDoo witch doctor.
Sarah was.
Stay on topic

[Ratmagiclady]

C'mon, John.

Joe was never de-witched by a VooDoo witch doctor.
Sarah was.
Stay on topic

Actually, Palin was 'de-witched' by a Pentecostal African *witch-hunter,* who was responsible for a lot of nasty, nasty things directed against women and children in Africa: she holds to a lot of this 'spiritual warfare' Dominionist 'New Apostolic Reformation' ie 'Third Wave' stuff, and all joking aside, these types actually do claim that Pagans are 'Satanic Witches,' and, ironically enough, attempt to use ceremonies to direct negative forces to harm, coerce, or even 'kill' people that they see as opposed to them. (Apparently even 'black magic' is 'OK if the Christian Right Republicans do it,' 'really it's just 'defending' against (those darn oppressive minorities responsible for all the ills in the world, they must be the Devil if they don't want the Wasilia Assembies of God in charge of the nation...)

It's actually kind of *not* funny when you find out they're planning on hitting your harvest festival and seem none too clear how physical they're planning on taking the 'metaphors,' if you know what I mean.

That's one of the reasons why some people go after fortunetellers: they *say* it's about fraudsters (And there are a lot of those,) but it also happens to be a way to 'legitimately' lean on people of other religions, regardless of whether or not they've done anything wrong.

In Romania, this involves the bare livelihoods and traditions of a lot of people who've been rolled over by a lot of hostile empires, from the Byzantine to the Ottomans to the Soviets to the more-recent... (Believe you me, the Eastern Orthodox churches want to pick up where they left off about aboriginal and traditional spiritual faiths and practices,) and as a result, the 'witches,' they do play hardball.

Not to vouch for the particular efficacy, honesty, or authenticity of anyone who hangs out a shingle in Romania, but still. This stuff's been a part of life there for a long time, good, bad, or indifferent.

(Let's not forget, of course, how much this plays into the general scapegoating of actual Roma people, and how that plays into stereotypes and accusations of them being 'frauds and dishonest people' just for being *associated* with that sort of stuff. This comes at the same time as a lot of 'anti-Roma' initiatives that always seem to get stoked up during hard times: over in former Yugoslavia, what happened to *them* from various sides consistently failed to get a mention here, even when most of the US media was sympathetic to Muslims.)

As for Voudou, some of these same people are responsible for stirring up hatred and blame among the suffering of Haiti in the name of missionary efforts: people have been killed, ...and then of course there's Uganda. (Yep, not just the gays, there, they've got a lot of 'witch' hunts there, too...)

News this morning is this Brian Fischer of the 'American Family Association' hate-group, mostly known for anti-gay deceit and hatemongering while still being considered people to interview by the MSM, is supporting the GOP's (Ron Paul's, in particular,) proposal to cut out the Bureau of Indian Affairs an what health services there are for Native Americans, justifying these treaty violations by blaming Native Americans for being 'all alcoholics and savages for not being Christian,' in large measure because a Yaqui professor had the temerity to be Native American when giving a pretty generic (and good) invocation at the memorial for the dead in Tuscon, which the Christian Right's still apparently wigging out about...

Well, here's Brian Fischer's own words, there:

“In all the discussions about the European settlement of the New World, one feature has been conspicuously absent: the role that the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality of native Americans played in making them morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil [...] Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture.”

And, of course, the Catholics have been playing up this thing about 'exorcism,' and 'occult dangers,' despite one of their 'experts' having been exposed for taking advantage of one of their subjects, instead of making a hysteria-check and looking back at what the dude claimed as an 'expert,' ...rather just going on the attack about 'occult dangers' and 'the Devil is real,' ....while calling people like yours truly 'doorways to possession,' mildly, of course. Much like they have done about all the 'ex-gay' people claiming what they want to hear, or priests caught in abuse that taught homophobia to give them access to victims, and ensure they wouldn't be believed... while proving in their own lives that they weren't telling the truth. ...Sometimes people would rather dig in deeper than admit they were wrong, and that can build dangerous hysteria very quickly when things start going wrong that seem to be out of common people's control.

The results are in any history book. If not page 4 news today.

Pretty involved stuff, all this, y'know. Most people don't hear about it unless they're either in one of those Fundie organizations or it's kinda directed at you, but it's pretty deep in politics, and the general hyperbole out there.

(And it really doesn't help, shooz, if some conflate 'voodoo' with 'Satanic Panic witch-hunters.' Voudouisants are real people, not cartoons or Hollywood characters or devils out of 'The Conservative Bible,' right? People who *claim* people of African diasporic traditions are working devil magic and saying that's what 'voodoo' is, then propose to be the banishers of it, ....Well, that's part of the hate.
There's a tremendous lot of BS out there, not just from people overselling it, but also from people who claim to be 'debunking,' and who in their zeal set a lot of real people up as similar sorts straw-men. )

[jolepp]

It is sad how the scheme of "pin the blame (of just about all ills) on a group (of others) [and promise/imply a pogrom as a solution]" continues to be a valid proposition; we (the people) should know better by now, with written history and all.