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Money Guru: None of Us Really Knows What to Do

Pundits should hedge their bets and speak with caution

By Wesley Oliver, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 1, 2009 2:45 PM CST

(Newser) – Financial pundits don’t know everything, and don't trust those who act like they do, Joel Lovell writes in the Washington Post. The GQ money expert acknowledges anxiety over dispensing information that may not be true at all. “It makes me feel like a bit of a fraud,” Lovell confesses. How should Americans spend their money? “Beats me,” he says.

And neither does anyone else, Lovell notes, but that hasn’t stopped loudmouths like Jim Cramer and the “somewhat frighteningly undaunted” Suze Orman from pontificating with “disconcerting” conviction. “Their confidence saps my own,” Lovell says. The desire for self-help guidance is distinctly American, but Lovell has learned his lesson: “The advice I trust the most now comes wrapped in doubt.”

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (2)]

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money," attends the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Suze Orman, host of CNBC's "The Suze Orman Show" arrives at the 32nd Annual Gracie Allen Awards gala, Monday, June 18, 2007, in New York. Orman received the Gracie Award for "Outstanding Talk Show." (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)

No one can say with certainty what the financial future will bring. (Shutter Stock)

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How can advice-givers be trusted? The answer, I think, is to share our own doubts and talk openly about our own anxieties, which requires speaking in a language we're not especially cozy with in America. -

The more terrifying and destabilizing the news, the more the financial-news sages seem to commit themselves to dispensing advice with unblinking certitude. -

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Money Guru: None of Us Really Knows What to Do