Predicting the future has its limits (iStockphoto)
Fill in the blanks. I dare you. And then read the rest of the post to see who wrote this, and what it’s about.
We’re currently finishing up an hour-long radio program called “The Folly of Prediction,” and I have to say that it was bracingly refreshing to read this paragraph and the column that follows it.
After more than a quarter-century as a professional _________, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don’t know about _________. Indeed, the area of __________ where I have devoted most of my energy and attention — the ups and downs of _________ — is where I find myself most often confronting important questions without obvious answers.
It’s from Greg Mankiw’s monthly New York Times column:
After more than a quarter-century as a professional economist, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don’t know about the economy. Indeed, the area of economics where I have devoted most of my energy and attention — the ups and downs of the business cycle — is where I find myself most often confronting important questions without obvious answers.
And here is another good bit from it:
By its nature, punditry craves attention, which is easier to attract with certainties than with equivocation. But that certitude reflects bravado more often than true knowledge.
In my view, the sooner we admit how poor we are at predicting the future, the better we will become at (incrementally) predicting the future.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Check this guy: http://www.agreeley.com/author.html
In 1979 or 1980 Father Andrew M. Greely wrote in the Book of Predictions (Wallace, Wallace and Wallechinsky):
“Before 1990, the present communist government in the Soviet Union will be overthrown either by a violet internal revolution or more likely by a “social democratic” faction within the party. Some of the constituent republics (the Ukraine, for example) will obtain authentic separate status. The Soviet colonies in Eastern Europe will then go the same route.”
This would have been an astonishing prediction even six months before the USSR collapsed in December 1991!
Read the1980 “Book of Predictions” for much delightful foolishness that drives home the point that predictions are fraught with peril. All except for Father Greely….!
This is a well known phenomena — see this young whippersnapper’s column from back in 2005: The Folly of Forecasting: http://www.thestreet.com/story/10226887/apprenticed-investor-the-folly-of-forecasting.html
Excerpt:
“Unfortunately, investors all too often give these “predictions” in print or on TV far more weight than they should. It’s very easy for a confident-sounding analyst, fund manager or professor to say something on TV that can throw off the best laid plans of investors.
I wish an SEC-mandated disclosure accompanied all pundit forecasts: “The undersigned states that he has no idea what’s going to happen in the future, and hereby declares that this prediction is merely a wildly unsupported speculation.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.”
http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2011/05/krugman-rated-best-pundit.html
Some are much better than others at making predictions/projections in economics and politics. It all depends on the soundness of your understanding and the basic model you have constructed. Krugman is a stand-out. And he was most recently on the button with inflation.