Tuesday, July 8, 2014

What if it’s not a forecast?


The U.S. economy added 288,000 jobs in June.

A Bloomberg panel of clueless economists made a collective guess-in-advance that the number would be 215,000. They were 25% off the mark. Way wrong, just like most months.

Notice I said "guess," although Bloomberg called it a "survey" and the (always unnamed) economists called it a "forecast."


These economists on the Bloomberg panel are always wrong. Every month. Their average guess is always wrong. Individually, they're mostly always wrong.

Why do Bloomberg and the news media and the cable TV talking heads keep reporting the useless advance guesses of the 51 guessers who are always wrong?

What's the fascination with trying to know the number one week or one day or one hour before the official report, when we all know that it's impossible to reliably forecast it?

The talking heads and the news media report and analyze flawed survey data every day, without caring that the data is flawed.

We should care more, and trust less.

     



1 comment:

  1. And doesn't the Gov't always do a correction 2 weeks later so they don't know either. Of course that is if you ever believe the the Gov't which hasn't been truthful in a long time! Remember the drop in unemployment just before the the election and then to have them do a correction after the election and increased it. Boy are we just sheep or what?

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