Yummy,
That is easy to explain if you understand BASIC satistics. The reason is that the correlation is spurious because is was due do to the existence of a third and a fourth variables, namely:
THE FEAR OF INFLATION AND THE FEAR OF DESINTEGRATION OF THE EUROZONE
Spurious Correlations. Although you cannot prove causal relations based on correlation coefficients (see
Elementary Concepts), you can still identify so-called
spurious correlations; that is, correlations that are due mostly to the influences of "other" variables. For example, there is a correlation between the total amount of losses in a fire and the number of firemen that were putting out the fire; however, what this correlation does not indicate is that if you call fewer firemen then you would lower the losses. There is a third variable (the initial
size of the fire) that influences both the amount of losses and the number of firemen. If you "control" for this variable (e.g., consider only fires of a fixed size), then the correlation will either disappear or perhaps even change its sign. The main problem with spurious correlations is that we typically do not know what the "hidden" agent is. However, in cases when we know where to look, we can use
partial correlations that control for (
partial out) the influence of specified variables.
Trendtracker,
It seems that to be a bit academic ( only a bit I must say) may be a bit of an asset. What do you think?