Economic Forecasts: Lies or Idiocy? Part I
There was an interesting report from Reuters today, which (for the first time) takes an aggregate look at the utterly futile/incompetent “forecasts” which have been inflicted upon us by Western “economists” and “experts” over the past four years. It is nothing less than a litany of failure and disgrace.
There are two aspects to this piece which make it very useful. First, it provides a considerable list of anecdotes illustrating the mind-numbing incompetence of these mainstream prognosticators. Then it goes one step further and offers an explanation for such pervasive failure. Let’s begin with the former.
- The May U.S. non-farm payrolls report and Philly Fed Index both reported numbers worse than the lowest “forecast” of the dozens of “experts” who participate in those surveys for the mainstream media
- In June 2008, not one of the “top-24” economists in the UK predicted a recession (with “similar” figures in the U.S.)
- None of the 24 “experts” polled by Reuters predicted that the UK economy would contract in the fourth quarter of 2010.
- Those same “experts” were too optimistic on 20 out of 27 categories of economic statistics for the U.S., UK, and the Euro zone for both the months of April and May
More generally, the margin of error for these pseudo-experts in their predictions for GDP have gone from 0.1% (pre-crisis) to 0.5% (today). Put another way, their forecasting of this vital economic statistic is now only 20% as reliable as it was a mere four years ago. What Reuters fails to add is that the huge increase in the bias/inaccuracy of these forecasts is invariably to the up-side...
Full commentary: http://www.bullionbullscanada.…nal-commentary&Itemid=133