It’s The Economy, Stupid (AKA Economists)
the economists in this survey thought that GDP would end up at about 2.4 percent in 2008, slightly below its long-term trend. This was a very bad forecast: GDP actually shrank by 3.3 percent once the financial crisis hit. What may be worse is that the economists were extremely confident in their bad prediction. They assigned only a 3 percent chance
... See moreNate Silver • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--and Those Fighting to Reverse It
amazon.com
It’s election season, so the viral charts are flying around fast and furious, as each side tries to support an economic narrative that will help their candidate win. In these trying, troubled, turbulent times, you’re basically on your own as an intelligent consumer of news. You can’t trust any single source — even me! — to be a complete unbiased ex... See more
How not to be fooled by viral charts, Part 2
Briar Harvey added
But people don't experience the economy through employment numbers or percentage point shifts in GDP. And when they are asked by pollsters about the state of the economy, they aren't reflecting on government statistics; they aren't even necessarily thinking about the present. Instead, what they’re doing is more like taking an inventory of economic ... See more
Sarah Wong added
The result was the crisis of the 1970s, when inflation reached double digits, unemployment surged, and interest rates were astronomical.
George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
Advanced economies have no divine right to grow at Great Moderation rates: Japan’s, which grew at 5 percent annually during the 1980s, has grown by barely one percent per year since then.43 This may be one reason why forecasters and policy makers were taken so much by surprise by the depth of the 2007 recession. Not only were they failing to accoun
... See moreNate Silver • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
