Our enlightened Fisher-clones

Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
26 February '10

Most Israeli leftists are hardly hostile anti-Zionists. They are just a lot like Irving Fisher, the self-confident star-economist.

Israel’s left-wing elite, cliquey opinion-makers, self-serving trend-setters and bon-ton groupies glory in posturing as anti-establishment nonconformists.

Their premise that Jews must always pay is perhaps the root symptom of the Jewish nation’s abnormality and inability to behave like other sovereign nations. Nowhere is there another country whose citizens ponder daily what more to offer their foes, what they can cede to appease and how to curry a little favor abroad.

The need to pay for our right to live is a uniquely Jewish syndrome. We alone bear an onus to justify what’s a self-evident, inalienable right to any other people. Our obsession to analyze things from our enemies’ perspective and understand them is simply unparalleled.

That said, most Israeli leftists are hardly hostile anti-Zionists. They are just a lot like Irving Fisher – among the forerunners of the modern breed of celebrity gurus. The self-confident star-economist’s most famous prediction – in October 1929 – was that “stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” But literally several days later, alas, reality confoundedly interfered with his rosy forecast and financial markets uncooperatively crashed.

Was the oracle of Wall Street a smidge contrite? Heck no. For long months Fisher (non-Jewish despite his name) clung to his optimistic orientation. The Great Depression’s misery notwithstanding, he assured despairing investors that recovery was just around the corner.

Today, when psychologists discuss the cognitive malfunctions and logical fallacies collectively known as wishful thinking, Fisher is almost inevitably cited as a prime example of one whose deductions weren’t based on evidence or sound analysis but on what he desired.

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