Letters: The dangers of certainty

Uncertain times

Sir: Kate Andrews’s article on the era of economic certainty (‘Crash test’, 18 March) is not the first article I have read – especially in the financial press – telling us that we live in uncertain times, as though at some stage in the past everyone knew exactly what was going to happen. I am unable to recall such a time.

I would argue that what we really should worry about is certainty. When people start talking about the end of history, claiming that there is a certain fortune to be made in buying cryptocurrencies or when ‘everybody’ knows the most important thing is to achieve net zero, that is the time to be worried. ‘Why did we not see it coming?’ the late Queen is reported to have asked about the 2008 banking crisis. Here is a simple answer: because no one can predict the future. The same is true of scientists, as we should have learned in the case of Covid.

We all know instinctively that humans cannot see the future, but as soon as experts start making predictions most people undergo a wilful suspension of disbelief. The more catastrophic the prediction, the more likely it is to be believed. In the past most believed the future was known to shaman, seers and the like; now many believe in experts.

John Murray
Guildford

Risky business

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Ross Clark

Could China collapse the US economy?

Sir: Kate Andrews writes that ‘no one, inside or outside government, had properly flagged that LDIs had left pension funds at the mercy of rates’. In fact Lord Wolfson, chairman of Next, wrote to the Bank of England in 2017 pointing out exactly this risk. Presumably the experts in the Bank and the Treasury felt they knew better.

Peter Fattorini
Conistone, North Yorks

Shore start

Sir: Unlike Matthew Parris (‘Why safe routes to asylum can’t work’, 11 March) we at the Refugee Council do not believe the government’s proposals on stopping Channel crossings are worth trying – because they are both unworkable and unprincipled.