Malcolm Forbes Quotes

No one can forecast the economy with certainty.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen.

Economists are about as useful as astrologers in predicting the future (and, like astrologers, they never let failure on one occasion diminish certitude on the next).

I'm an economist, I do a lot of forecasting, and I'm probably one of the most successful forecasters in terms of very specific kinds of forecasts.

An economist is someone who knows all the answers to last years' questions.

I don't think the economy telegraphs very clearly where it's going.

All economic forecasts are subject to considerable uncertainty. There is always a wide range of plausible outcomes for important economic variables, including the federal funds rate.

Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

When you poll all of the economists, uh, across America that I think are intellectually honest they would all, or maybe not all, but 95% of them 96% of them would say you know we really have got a powerful economy.

It’s very difficult to find out what’s going on in the economy even when its happening.

If we're going to forecast the business cycle, surely it is a good idea to know the business cycle. Sounds reasonable, but it's not that easy.

The outlook for the economy, as always, is highly uncertain.

Sometimes economists are right, and sometimes economists are wrong.

Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.

If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.

Every economy is uncertain. Referring to this or any economy as 'uncertain' is an unnecessary and pessimistic redundancy.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right.

Markets are frequently ahead of, and often out of sync with, the economy.

[Discussing economic trends:] You can find a study that says anything.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the outcome he predicted yesterday did not happen today.

The CBO is the only group that makes the weatherman's ten-day forecast look like exact science. They seem to miss their projections with extreme regularity.

One thing I've noticed about history - you can search on newspapers going back hundreds of years, search for 'economic forecast,' you don't find it. It would be very rare to find it.