Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Quote of the week

“Like weather forecasters, economic forecasters must deal with a system that is extraordinarily complex, that is subject to random shocks, and about which our data and understanding will always be imperfect. In some ways, predicting the economy is even more difficult than forecasting the weather, because an economy is not made up of molecules whose behavior is subject to the laws of physics, but rather of human beings who are themselves thinking about the future and whose behavior may be influenced by the forecasts that they or others make.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at the Boston College School of Law commencement, May 22, 2009

1 comment:

Sid Raisch said...

Something similar was just posted at David Wolfe's Ageless Marketing referring to the problems with consumer research. In a consumer driven economy there is a direct correlation. It was prefaced with the quote:

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Albert Einstein

Here's a link to the entire post: http://tinyurl.com/researchfallacy

 
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