Lloyd Lofthouse

Do pessimists get more attention in the traditional media and on the Internet than optimists?

CNBC featured another “sky-is-falling” expert (so-called) in US Economy Going from Bad to Worse: Roubini

Why does the media focus on these losers? You may wonder what I mean by Roubini being a loser since he garners so much media attention.

Even the New York Times published a piece with a headline that shouted, Dr. Doom, and said, “Roubini’s critical and consistently bearish economic views have earned him the nicknames “Dr. Doom” and “permabear” in the media.

This is the second prediction of a financial advisor that I have written about and Roubini appears to be worse at predicting the future than the first guy I wrote about in The Earning Power of Predictions

If you want to know the details, I recommend reading Nouriel Roubini Was Wrong, Again, and Again and Again.

“Dr. Doom”

Here are a two pull quotes from that post: “Update May 19, 2011: Okay, this has become as easy as hitting the side of a barn with a baseball. Now, more than two years later, Roubini’s predictions made late in the financial crisis and documented below couldn’t be looking much worse. More importantly, any investors who followed his advice have taken a bath (that means they lost a lot of money) . Since he stated that stocks were engaging in a sucker’s rally, U.S. and global stock prices have doubled!“

“Update October 30, 2009: Oil has climbed above $80 per barrel this month so Roubini’s January prediction that it would stay below $40 for all of 2009 ain’t looking too sharp just now.”

You may want to click over to Eric Tyson.com and read the rest of the facts about Dr. Doom being wrong again and again.

Why does the major media focus on so called guru’s of doom and gloom who are often wrong way more than they are right instead of someone that is right more than they are wrong?

Is the answer Yellow Journalism or the fact that one large-scale scientific study concluded that “pessimists” live longer healthier lives than optimists do? Source: Recruiter.com on Hiring Pessimists

Another opinion about who lives longer—a pessimist or an optimist?

As for me, I suspect I’m more of a pessimist than an optimist as I’m always expecting the worst to happen, while writing goals that aim for success and then working to make those goals materialize. To me, if you do not do anything, the glass is empty–not half full or half empty.

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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