As An Economist, I Understand The Economy Just As Well As A Non-Economist
As an economist with over thirty years of experience, I know my stuff. I have multiple advanced degrees in economics, all my jobs have been in the industry, and people even tell me I have the vibe of an economist. I know that last comment has more to do with my maverick knowledge of market forces rather than the fact that all my relationships are based on a supply and demand model.
I love economics and I imagine that The Queen of the Social Sciences loves me back. My body literally tingles when I think about topics like quantitative easing — oooh, foreign exchange markets — ahhh, or Jerome Powell — woof.
Economics is my purpose and my passion, and I’m proud of how my profession contributes to the well-being of society. One of the key ways we do this is through providing timely and accurate forecasts. Our reputation for providing trustworthy information to the public is right up there with meteorologists.
The invisible hand of the market is visible to me. For example, my personal track record of correctly forecasting interest rate decisions is stellar. When I forecast, you can take it as fact. My statistics speak for themselves. Throughout my career, I have forecast the decision correctly 50% of the time. That is benchmarked in the top 50% amongst my peers. If you add that up, it tells you that you can have confidence in my forecasts 100%.
Forget that I didn’t see the Global Financial Crisis coming, or the Covid downturn, or the latest housing crisis. Those are what we call in the business “learning opportunities.” And forget that I didn’t correctly forecast the last few interest rate decisions, but that Bryan my barista did.
When I asked Bryan about his research and predictive models, he told me “I don’t know, it was just a random guess.” Bryan is an outlier. Bryan is unusually lucky.
Forget about Bryan. I’ve rigorously optimized my forecasting models and can give you certainty that I know what is coming next: At some point in the future the economy will advance, at some other point in the future the economy will recede, and at some other point in the future the economy will move sideways. At all those points, I’ll be there with my forecasting models eagerly anticipating my next learning opportunity.