How to Read the Future: The Yield Curve, Affect, and Financial Prediction

affecting the marketHow to Read the Future: The Yield Curve, Affect, and Financial PredictionCaitlin ZaloomWe are merely reminding ourselves that human decisions affecting the future, whether personal or political or economic, cannot depend on strict mathematical expectation, since the basis for making such calculations does not exist; and that it is our innate urge to activity which makes the wheels go round, our rational selves choosing between the alternatives as best we are able, calculating where we can, but often falling back for our motive on whim or sentiment or chance.—John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and MoneyThe future is unknowable. Yet in global financial markets, profits and protection of wealth depend on actions taken under this necessarily uncertain condition. Several decades ago John Maynard Keynes pointed to the modern desire for clear knowledge in economic activity. Statistical data promise certainty. Affect arises when knowledge has no solid ground. The future, for him, Thanks to Matthew Engelke, Eric Klinenberg, Andrew Lakoff, Elizabeth Roberts, and Bambi Schieffelin, and to Claudio Lomnitz and the Public Culture reviewers for their generous comments and insightful criticisms. Ernest Baskin deserves special appreciation for his research assistance in the worlds of finance theory and anthropology. Siva Arumugam contributed with financial acumen and graphic aplomb.Public Culture 21:2 d o 10 ...