Probably the best kind of a job to have would be one with a massive salary, undoubted implied prestige but absolutely no accountability. One where you can say or do pretty much as you please with no associated fear of being called to account or made to explain yourself to anyone. One in which exists numerous perfectly plausible means of rationalizing the most grievous of errors, the most errant of pronouncements. Where the very nature of the thing which you are trying to understand and illuminate unrelentingly provides the excuses you need for your repeated inability to do just that.
And that’s OK, because we all know these things are not an exact science. Welcome to the world of the international economic forecaster. Somebody who might be attached for example to the IMF or the World Bank or the World Economic Forum or Nafta or any one of a long list of mysterious global organizations.
If I was a blocklayer and a person whose house I had got the job of building asked me how many blocks it would require and how long it would take I would find it very hard to defend or justify a response such as “it could be anywhere from five hundred to five thousand and it could take anywhere from a week to three months”.
Typically in any professional realm a certain amount of accurate estimating is required, to the nearest ballpark will do. The international economic forecaster has created a domain for himself where none of that inconvenient need for accuracy applies to anything he does. He has replaced ballpark with galaxy or when really pressurized, time zone. His time is spent monitoring developments and analyzing trends. This is work which can be done in conjunction with looking at internet pornography, staying in bed half the day, attending conferences, chairing superfluous think tanks and skiing. You would have thought that when the words analyst or forecaster appear in your job title that these are areas in which you would excel. And you would be wrong there too. For the international economic forecaster is a law unto himself.
“Initial predictions of a third quarter recovery and an annual growth rate of 1.2% proved to be a little optimistic as crowd trouble at a League Two fixture in Darlington and an outbreak of colic in John Oxx’s yard on the Curragh severely impacted Asian markets forcing analysts to revise their growth forecasts.”
“Gross national product has grown in inverse proportion to many analysts’ preliminary estimates due primarily to the re appearance of Dirty Den on Eastenders and the suspected kidnapping of half of Leo O’ Malley’s dairy herd from his farm in Cloughjordan”
Grand, that explains that then. And thanks. Thanks a bunch. A big bunch or a little bunch, not sure, say nothing till you hear more, or someone puts a microphone to your head.
