[Petronski]

I'm not an economist...

!

[supercat]

In many fields, an honest novice can be more accurate in his appraisals than a dishonest "expert". Buckhead didn't claim any particular expertise when it came to authenticating questioned documents (unlike the "Examiner of Questioned Documents" hired by CBS), but he was able to put together enough common knowledge to point out that something was fishy.

Many types of qualitative predictions and judgments in economics can be made without any special expertise. One doesn't have to have a PhD to realize that if something that's worth $100,000 is divided into 1,000 shares, the shares can't be worth $1,000 each no matter what the market price for them happens to be, nor to understand that a sudden drop of share price to $100 would not represent any real loss of wealth.

If you dispute any of my reasoning, kindly explain your specific objections. I've tried to be simple and straightforward, but I may have missed something.