Edgar Fiedler

We're not very good at forecasting, and we don't know how to measure the impact of economic policy.

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.

Forecasting is a maddening occupation. It is always fascinating and exciting and rewarding. yet it is also regularly exasperating and infuriating, occasionally even deranging.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.