·  An event shocks the markets when it contradicts conventional wisdom of how the financial world is supposed to work. The uncertainty leads to a dramatic disengagement by the financial community the almost always requires sales and, hence, lower prices of goods and assets. We can model the euphoria and the fear stage of business cycle. Their parameters are quite different. We have never successfully modeled the transition from euphoria to fear.

If I introduce myself to a dinner guest  as an economist I encounter expectations that I shall be boring, opinionated, obsessed by money, and usually wrong. People ask what I think is going to happen to exchange rates, without much interest in the answer. If i respond that I am not that kind of economist, they express surprise that there is other kind of economist, and turn to talk to the person on the other side.