Quotes from Edgar Fiedler

If we're going to forecast the business cycle, surely it is a good idea to know the business cycle. Sounds reasonable, but it's not that easy.

For a politician, the long term is between now and the next election.

Forecasters tend to learn less and less about more and more, until in the end they know nothing about everything.

The public hasn't learned that businesses don't pay taxes: only people do. They're confused, and this makes an adviser's job all the harder.

If a proposal doesn't prove out as expected when we run it, sometimes we change the model.

For economist the real world is often a special case.

The general public still expects a lot more forecasting accuracy than any of us can deliver.

He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

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.

To qualify as a recession, economic activity must decline in an absolute sense; a mere slowdown in real growth is not enough.

Experience shows that a recession is never the result of just a few large industries dragging the economy down while the others continue to expand.

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.

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 such thing as a riskless hedge against inflation.

No one can escape the iron rule that once you make a forecast, you know you're going to be wrong; you just don't know when and in which direction!

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.

If you have to forecast, forecast often.

At some risk of oversimplification, I suggest that the usual reason a business cycle turns into a monster is an overdose of government policy.

Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard.

Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.