As it turns out, certainty is much more profitable and gets better ratings than being right.  From Nicholas Kristoff today:

Talent bookers for television shows and reporters tended to call up experts who provided strong, coherent points of view, who saw things in blacks and whites. People who shouted — like, yes, Jim Cramer!

Mr. Tetlock called experts such as these the “hedgehogs,” after a famous distinction by the late Sir Isaiah Berlin (my favorite philosopher) between hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs tend to have a focused worldview, an ideological leaning, strong convictions; foxes are more cautious, more centrist, more likely to adjust their views, more pragmatic, more prone to self-doubt, more inclined to see complexity and nuance. And it turns out that while foxes don’t give great sound-bites, they are far more likely to get things right.

To some extent, I think this is what President Obama and Tim Geithner are dealing with right now.  No one knows the perfect solution to getting the economy back on track, but everyone expects a simple, coherent plan, which will produce a few, simple soundbites.  Such a plan doesn't exist.  And such soundbites wouldn't do anything but give the cable news shows something else to yap about for another 24 hours. 

My right wing friends will say I'm merely making excuses for Obama and Geithner's lack of experience, their indecisiveness, and their overall inability to do the job.  I've watched and read enough about both of them to believe otherwise.  I think they have both have a strong understanding of the problems at hand - and I would much prefer boring, thoughtful, pragmatic leaders dealing with this crisis, then brash, overly-certain ones.  There is nothing wrong with being uncertain about how to solve a difficult problem, as long as you're making concrete steps to get to the right answer, constantly weighing how things could work better as new information becomes available.