Don't Let the Numbers Crunch You

Statistical trickery dazzled a lot of unwary investors before the global financial meltdown. Too many based investment decisions on flashy but deeply flawed statistical analyses that pointed to, for example, unreasonably high yields coupled with low risks. So a lot of people lost their shirts.

Taking heat for some of the disastrous hocus-pocus were a few well-known and an army of nameless numbers crunchers working for international ratings agencies, brokers and the business media. To protect their reputations – and jobs – some slippery financial analysts found ways to pass blame to other no-names, such as so-called "greedy" investors who neglected to do their homework and "foolish" homebuyers who bit off more than they could chew.