Economists Lack Chagrin.

I have a great idea. I want a job as a pastcastor, not a forecaster, a pastcaster. These are the  people that report on the almost-current state of the economy.  A pastcaster's job is to report on what happened last month.  A job that lacks all accountability and enables a person to make more pastcasts without acknowledging past errors while insisting that the current pastcast is correct. 


Consider this recent example. A headline dated February 22, 2012 read: "Home sales jump more than 4% in January." The report was from the National Association of Realtors. Everyone including Obama is no doubt ecstatic. The democrats are excited and the stock market reacts positively. The talkshow hosts have new fodder to feed Obama's successful programs. They are working. The housing market is recovering, or is it? The headline will be quoted so often that it will become inviolate. So what you ask? I read past the headline to the embedded disclaimers and revisions of past pastcasts - and the other shoe quietly hit the floor so to speak.


It occurs several paragraphs down in the report. It read almost as a sidebar. The report read, " The Realtors group revised December's sales figures to show a 0.5% decline in home sales. It had initially reported a 5% increase for December. With no chagrin for a monster of a December revision, the economists go on to predict, that based on January's pastcast, conditions are improving and that could mean further gains this year. Or could it mean revisions to the January home sales results?


My headline for the report is National Association of Realtors revise December's home sales figures to show a 0.5% decline rather than the 5% increase previously reported. Also, January data show a 4% increase in home sales, which based on past experience will be revised significantly downward next month. The facts often become obscured by a desire to show the administration that its programs are working.