Just weeks before the stock market crash of 1929, Evangeline Adams, an American astrologer known as “the wonder of Wall Street,” claimed on her radio program that the “Dow Jones could climb to heaven.”

But then, when it comes to prognosticating, real economists haven’t fared much better, especially in 2008. As John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

Efforts to predict the future are as old as humanity and as prevalent as ever. Recent market upheavals have even led a few financial professionals to seek out unorthodox advisers. “When conditions are this volatile,” Thomas Taccetta, a Florida-based stock trader told The Times, “consulting a psychic can be as good a strategy as any other.”

Unlike Mr. Galbraith, he wasn’t joking. But whether with tea leaves, tarot cards or computers in a lab, soothsaying rarely fails to spark a debate.

Lately, one has been swirling around the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

That respected publication has generated outrage in some professional circles by planning to publish a study on extrasensory perception. Written by Daryl J. Bern, a professor at Cornell University in New York, it chronicles nine lab experiments that claim to demonstrate the ability of ordinary people to predict random events in the immediate future.

Some psychologists say the study holds up under scientific scrutiny. Others agree with Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. “It’s craziness, pure craziness,” Dr. Hyman told The Times. “I can’t believe a major journal is allowing this work in. I think it’s just an embarrassment for the entire field.”

Dr. Bern’s ideas would probably not generate any controversy in Thailand, where the fascination with the supernatural and passion for fortune telling are strong.

“There are only two things that people are really, really interested in: sex and fortune telling,” Luck Rakanithes told The Times. Mr. Luck runs a multimillion-dollar call center in Bangkok where fortune tellers and astrologers dispense advice, often on financial matters.

Thailand is not the only place people consult soothsayers, but there the practice is common at the highest level of government. In 2006, fortune tellers are said to have influenced a military coup. And Thai leaders have been known to avoid the press by citing an unfavorable astrological alignment for answering questions. That is an excuse politicians in any country may envy.

They also might get a few ideas from Romanian politicians. Battling a severe economic downturn, the Romanian government recently called for a 16 percent income tax on witches, astrologers and fortune tellers.

Romanian officials, like their Thai counterparts, have been known to seek paranormal counsel, and President Traian Basescu and his aides sometimes dress in purple, to ward off evil.

They may need a lot of purple. A witch named Bratara Buzea was planning a hex using a particularly potent potion of cat excrement and dead dog.

“We do harm to those who harm us,” she told a news agency. “They want to take the country out of this crisis using us? They should get us out of the crisis because they brought us into it.”

Surely the government is trying to do just that. With a little help from psychics, astrologers and fortune tellers.


KEVIN DELANEY