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Our forecasts are just about as good as Michael Fish's, admits BoE's chief economist


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Old 06-01-2017, 02:03
Palafrugel
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Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane said profession was ‘in crisis’
Said economists suffered Michael Fish moment over financial crisis and Brexit
He admitted it was 'business as usual' despite the dire warnings of a recession
Weatherman Mr Fish famously told viewers they would be no hurricane in 1987


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4UwWrxOba
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Hopefully this is a watershed moment.
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Old 06-01-2017, 02:30
david16
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It wasn't a carribean or Florida style storm in 1987. Severe gales more like.

There may have been the odd hurricane force gust in parts of the UK on the track of the storm they were slightly out in 1987 (the strongest winds clipped the UK's south coast when it was expected to be the middle of the sea between the UK and France), but not sustained hurricane force wind speeds throughout the entire storm the way it is in and around the tropics. That's no consolation to those who suffered a lot of damage to their property

But in relation to Brexit, the UK has not actually left the EU. The BoE thought the UK would have started the process of leaving it hours after the result. It would have been a total disaster for the UK economy had the UK started talks to leave the EU straight away.

And the process of leaving the EU is like trying to untangle a load of wires with the attached plugs plugged into a multi gang electrical socket.
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Old 06-01-2017, 02:36
sangreal
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It's funny how different media outlets spin things....


Andy Haldane: Bank of England has not changed view on negative impact of Brexit
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...-a7511351.html

"Bank of England chief economist says pain has been delayed rather than avoided"

Not even any mention of the Michael Fish comment there....


The BBC's version lies somewhere inbetween the Mail and Independent

Crash was economists' 'Michael Fish' moment, says Andy Haldane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38525924

which lays emphasis more on economic predictions in general and particularly the global financial crash of 2007-09 as being the Michael Fish moment...
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Unread 06-01-2017, 07:06
Dotheboyshall
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You mean mostly accurate.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 08:05
FusionFury
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Their gloomy predictions were wrong
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Unread 06-01-2017, 08:24
Andrew1954
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Who knew that accurately predicting the future behaviour of essentially chaotic systems like the weather and economies was inherently difficult?
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Unread 06-01-2017, 08:27
jmclaugh
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It might be news to them but I'm not sure that many people thought any different except economists and of course anyone whose viewpoint such forecasts vindicated.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 08:45
smudges dad
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Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane said profession was ‘in crisis’
Said economists suffered Michael Fish moment over financial crisis and Brexit
He admitted it was 'business as usual' despite the dire warnings of a recession
Weatherman Mr Fish famously told viewers they would be no hurricane in 1987


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4UwWrxOba
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Hopefully this is a watershed moment.
There wasn't a hurricane. That was false news churned out by the tabloids after the severs storm.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 10:17
Phil 2804
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There wasn't a hurricane. That was false news churned out by the tabloids after the severs storm.
There was however a severe deadly storm that devastated the south of England that the Met Office wholly and completely failed to forecast. This is not media spin this is and was fact. The storm formed and reached peak strength in a matter of hours and the Met Office lacked the knowledge and data to even know such events were possible in the UK. Its only in the last 50 years or so that the Met Office have accepted tornadoes occur in the UK. Almost everything the Met Office has done in the past 30 years forecast wise has been geared around preventing another 1987 from happening.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 10:22
Alrightmate
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This is the problem of economics. Perhaps we place too much stock in it as a reliable predictor of the future.

It wasn't until recently that I found out that economics isn't a hard science, it's actually a social science. Not too dissimilar from sociology. I used to think it involved serious number crunching and forecasts based on hard figures. Which it may do to some extent.
But I thought it was a lot more certain as a reliable indicator of future economic predictions.
I don't think I'm alone as I think most members of the public are like myself and shared this perception.

Maybe the reality of the situation is that there are so many variables involved that things can change or be missed so that predictions need to be flexible in order to accommodate chaos. You also have the problem which can perhaps be likened to polling, you're not necessarily sure that you're working with the best possible data in the first place. So the best you can do is make a good estimate based on the reliability of the data you are using.

It's worth bearing in mind when they tell us that it is predicted that China will become the world superpower halfway through this century. It just may well be that this will not happen.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 10:23
DW2
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Brexit logic:

A group of friends vote on if they should go to the beach tomorrow or the cinema.

Met Office predict heavy rain
Tabloid newspapers exaggerate weather warning and then brand it as project fear
Michael Gove points out that the weather forecast is often wrong and we've had enough of experts
Nigel Farage predicts glorious sunshine for all.

Reality: It drizzles, but the rain is not as heavy as the Met office predicted. It turns out that nobody who voted to go to the beach had a wet weather plan.

Conclusion....Michael Gove and Nigel Farage were right all along and those so-called experts at the Met Office can safely be ignored. They sit on the beach, in the drizzle, congratulating themselves for ignoring the experts.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 10:35
jmclaugh
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This is the problem of economics. Perhaps we place too much stock in it as a reliable predictor of the future.

It wasn't until recently that I found out that economics isn't a hard science, it's actually a social science. Not too dissimilar from sociology. I used to think it involved serious number crunching and forecasts based on hard figures. Which it may do to some extent.
But I thought it was a lot more certain as a reliable indicator of future economic predictions.
I don't think I'm alone as I think most members of the public are like myself and shared this perception.

Maybe the reality of the situation is that there are so many variables involved that things can change or be missed so that predictions need to be flexible in order to accommodate chaos. You also have the problem which can perhaps be likened to polling, you're not necessarily sure that you're working with the best possible data in the first place. So the best you can do is make a good estimate based on the reliability of the data you are using.

It's worth bearing in mind when they tell us that it is predicted that China will become the world superpower halfway through this century. It just may well be that this will not happen.
There is also the fact that economists are people and people are not without bias on many issues which explains why for example left wing economic views and forecasts differ from right wing ones..
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Unread 06-01-2017, 11:55
Dotheboyshall
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And has been pointed out the forecasts assumed article 50 would have been triggered immediately
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Unread 06-01-2017, 12:13
jmclaugh
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And has been pointed out the forecasts assumed article 50 would have been triggered immediately
And as has been pointed out until the exit negotiations have been confirmed it will be no clearer before it is triggered or after it is triggered how things will pan out.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 12:15
david16
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There was however a severe deadly storm that devastated the south of England that the Met Office wholly and completely failed to forecast. This is not media spin this is and was fact. The storm formed and reached peak strength in a matter of hours and the Met Office lacked the knowledge and data to even know such events were possible in the UK. Its only in the last 50 years or so that the Met Office have accepted tornadoes occur in the UK. Almost everything the Met Office has done in the past 30 years forecast wise has been geared around preventing another 1987 from happening.
If you look on youtube that devastating low pressure system thst caused all that damage and chaos in 1987 was on the forecasts pressure charts. Except that it tracked a bit further north than expected and the strongest winds made landfall instead of staying out at sea to the south of the UK. The technology wasn't around then to forecast the weather to near total accuracy like today and even today the forecast beyond 3 days is wrong more often than right. The fact they were still using magnetic symbols up to 2+ years before the storm suggests the BBC weather were still relying on lot of manual methods to create the forecasts even in the late 1980's era.

Michael Fish also said baton down the hatches on that 9.30pm forecast hours before because it was going to be very windy.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 12:23
smudges dad
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There was however a severe deadly storm that devastated the south of England that the Met Office wholly and completely failed to forecast. This is not media spin this is and was fact. The storm formed and reached peak strength in a matter of hours and the Met Office lacked the knowledge and data to even know such events were possible in the UK. Its only in the last 50 years or so that the Met Office have accepted tornadoes occur in the UK. Almost everything the Met Office has done in the past 30 years forecast wise has been geared around preventing another 1987 from happening.
So you agree that there wasn't a hurricane and that Michael Fish was correct in that. The "fact" of the hurricane was false news invented by the tabloids and has now become established in general knowledge, even though it didn't happen. The severe storm was predicted as a weather event, but the damage caused by it wasn't predicted, as that wasn't the Met Office's remit at the time.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 12:56
Alrightmate
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There is also the fact that economists are people and people are not without bias on many issues which explains why for example left wing economic views and forecasts differ from right wing ones..
Yes I should have mentioned that when I referred to the 'science' of polling. Even experts are vulnerable to confirmation bias. In many if not most cases they won't necessarily do this deliberately, but the human factor will come into it where the subjective viewpoint of people can plausibly corrupt the criteria involved.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 13:06
trunkster
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Brexit logic:

A group of friends vote on if they should go to the beach tomorrow or the cinema.

Met Office predict heavy rain
Tabloid newspapers exaggerate weather warning and then brand it as project fear
Michael Gove points out that the weather forecast is often wrong and we've had enough of experts
Nigel Farage predicts glorious sunshine for all.

Reality: It drizzles, but the rain is not as heavy as the Met office predicted. It turns out that nobody who voted to go to the beach had a wet weather plan.

Conclusion....Michael Gove and Nigel Farage were right all along and those so-called experts at the Met Office can safely be ignored. They sit on the beach, in the drizzle, congratulating themselves for ignoring the experts.
Remoan Logic :

If economists with an agenda similar to ours issue enough doom laden forecasts then one of them might become reality.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 13:07
Alrightmate
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And has been pointed out the forecasts assumed article 50 would have been triggered immediately
I'm not sure whether you're aware of it or not, but your point reinforces the flawed nature of economics. It based its predictions on something which it believed to be a constant. But which wasn't. There are no doubt other variables which will present themselves along the way due to this change of circumstances which will not be figured in the initial predictions.

Each time a new variable pops up due to the knock-on effect of an unexpected change the calculations need to adjust based on a new reality which has presented itself, thus throwing other things out of synch.

So I think that the best we can hope for is that economics work, but mainly in chunks of time in the short to mid term. Otherwise we'd never get recessions because most forecasts would predict them in time and we would have time to readjust beforehand.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 13:48
DW2
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Remoan Logic :

If economists with an agenda similar to ours issue enough doom laden forecasts then one of them might become reality.
Even if a minority of the doom and gloom forecasts come true that's still worrying. How many of the positive predictions made by Brexiteers have started to come true?
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Unread 06-01-2017, 13:55
trunkster
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Even if a minority of the doom and gloom forecasts come true that's still worrying. How many of the positive predictions made by Brexiteers have started to come true?
"positive predictions" It's not a prediction duel. Tell you what, how about actually being positive and making it work.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 14:19
DW2
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"positive predictions" It's not a prediction duel. Tell you what, how about actually being positive and making it work.
So far the pound has fallen, interest rate have been cut, along with other interventions, in an attempt to stabalise the economy and hate crimes have increased. Sure, this is a long way off from complete economic collapse and world war three, however it's still not great.

Surely Brexit has to offer us some positives otherwise what was the point in it? Pointing out that it wasn't as bigger disaster as many predicted is hardly a massive boast.
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Unread 06-01-2017, 14:53
moox
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What, you mean they were right 99.9% of the time and got it wrong once? I'm struggling to work out how it's a good thing that the pound has crashed and the BoE had to prepare emergency stabilisation measures.

It's a better record than Brexiters - 99.9% lies, 100% wrong
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Unread 06-01-2017, 14:55
Palafrugel
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What, you mean they were right 99.9% of the time.
Did you miss the last few recessions they forgot to forecast and how they attempted to project fear us into joining the Euro along with Ken Clarke and the UK automotive industry?
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Unread 06-01-2017, 14:58
trunkster
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So far the pound has fallen, interest rate have been cut, along with other interventions, in an attempt to stabalise the economy and hate crimes have increased. Sure, this is a long way off from complete economic collapse and world war three, however it's still not great.

Surely Brexit has to offer us some positives otherwise what was the point in it? Pointing out that it wasn't as bigger disaster as many predicted is hardly a massive boast.
To quote an often used phrase by remoaners "it hasn't happened yet"
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