There are a few lessons to glean from the Surprise Index, which I was only made aware of this week. First, predictions are often reported as news. They’re not. They’re predictions, and they’re almost always wrong. Full disclosure: I’ve been as guilty as anyone for breathlessly passing along predictions without the qualifying them as conjecture. Second, to be fair to the analysts, sometimes the first draft of the economic figures aren’t any better than the predictions. A great example: We initially estimated GDP falling 3.8% in the last three months of 2008. Instead, it fell nearly 9%. That’s a horrible miscalculation that had a real impact on decisions made by Congress and the Federal Reserve to fix the economy. I wonder what the Economic Surprise Index would say about first readings of GDP and unemployment numbers.
Source: The Atlantic
