I've often thought about finance blogs from a binomial distribution point of view. Say, that out of the 25M+ finance blogs (http://bit.ly/ep75e) there are about 100k serious ones. Say that each week for a year each blog makes a verifiable, binary outcome prediction. Also assume that there is a 50-50 chance of that prediction coming true. We could expect 4 or 5 of those 100k blogs to be right 40 weeks of the year JUST BY GUESSING. Let alone some actual insight. Say you were one of those winning blog readers, and week after week this blogger keeps getting things right. Like Bear Stearns going bankrupt, for example. Every now and then (s)he could get something wrong, but there would always be a reason, or (s)he could say that the outcome is just temporary, and that the true outcome is anytime now.

You (and eventually, your friends) would start investing your money along his/her advise, and if the blogger is really, really popular (s)he could start moving the market enough to change the odds from 50-50 to 60-40.

I don't really know how to stop this, but it is interesting.

You realize you've just described a genuine, in-the-wild scam, right?

that and the old idea that enough monkeys pounding on typewriters can reproduce the works of shakespeare.

That thing read like Ender's Game Peter/Valentine playing politics as Lock/Demosthenes, except South Koreanified and economic.

Sometimes technology has a way of overwhelming societies capability to adapt to it.

Cocaine problems in the US. Ultrasound in a country with a one child policy and a strong cultural preference for boys. Here, rigid societal hierarchies are subverted by the anonymity of the internet.

Technology has the amazing power to shape society as well as mirror it.

Is there an American version of this guy? It seems like all the really well known American pundits are non-anonymous...