Economic
forecasters divide into two groups. There are those who cannot know the
future but think they can – and then there are those who recognize
their inability to know the future. Major shifts in the economy are
rarely forecast and often not fully recognized until they have been
under way for some time. So judgments about the US economy have to be
tentative.
Now I read his paper which he and a west coast academic are circulating and it is one of those if and if and if documents with models which would not pass muster in any good engineering school, but read the words. The conclusion, no forecaster ever has a good forecast. Yet then he asks us to believe his recommendation of what will make the future better ... is that not a forecast, and has he not already denied any valid forecast, thus why should we believe him now.
That is the problem with academics, especially economists, the write all too often as if they understand reality and then in the next breath ask us to suspend it.
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