He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.
Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard.
Forecasting is a maddening occupation. It is always fascinating and exciting and rewarding. yet it is also regularly exasperating and infuriating, occasionally even deranging.
There is no formula that will guarantee success in forecasting, no magic words that will part the clouds. The real problem, as the old saw puts it, is that the future lies ahead.
For a politician, the long term is between now and the next election.
Expansions do not die of old age. The probability of recession in the following year is the same for a three-year-old expansion as it is for a five- or six-year-old expansion.
For economist the real world is often a special case.
In a sense, there are as many forecasting methods as there are forecasters. But I would argue that most projections are derived from two major methods: macro-econometric models and eclectic judgment.
There is no such thing as a riskless hedge against inflation.