In the last few days, we’ve seen quite a few statistics reported by various groups that measure how the economy is doing. Being a Realtor, I especially look at reports having to do with housing- particularly sales volume and prices. What inevitably goes along with these reports are the opinions of the pundits, both media reporters, and economists. The problem you’ll see with these is that whatever opinion you want to see, whether optimistic or pessimistic, can be found reported somewhere in the media. It’s like Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
From time to time, I pass some of these statistics along to you so you can draw your own conclusions. Just remember a few things about reading what economists think of them.
- Economics has been called “The Dismal Science”
- If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion!
- ”The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” - John Kenneth Galbraith
