Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Political Bias Corrupts Economic Analysis

Politically driven ideology tends to make it hard to think clearly about the economy.

April 7, 2015 at 2:48 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

On the job.
Photographer: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images

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Those of you who over the many years have followed some of the thoughts and observations I jot down each morning may have noticed several themes. Prominent among them is that forecasting is folly; cognitive errors create investing mistakes; consider context when analyzing data; recency bias overemphasizes the latest data; mixing politics with investing is a costly mistake.

Which brings us to an article in the National Review that managed to combine many if not all of these themes: "2014's Jobs Boom Wasn’t Even Much of a Boom. Does This Jobs Report Mean It’s Already Over?"