Winston Churchill Quotes
The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year – and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister (Conservative), Response to a reporter who asked him what characteristics a politician needed, 1902, Quoted in Langworth, Churchill by Himself, 2008
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He had standard barometers made and distributed widely, accumulating the data and predicting the weather. Although crude and inaccurate by modern standards, his system was a vast improvement over earlier efforts. Today, we use the term for economics and politics as well.
Despite this reality, most politicians, if they have the resources and high enough position, surround themselves with experts to advise them and then listen to them to take positions in campaigns or advise them on policy making if they are in office.
He is absolutely right, but unfortunately made this statement several years after he served as the Fed Chairman. He never made a statement like this when he and his colleagues made their policies based on their economic forecasting. Central bankers have generally felt that one of their jobs was to give the people confidence in the nation’s banking system and economy and the admission that much policy making was based on “coin toss” forecasting.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, Churchill was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, as leader from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. Churchill was also well known for his military career and as a historian, painter and writer, and among his many awards was the Nobel Prize in Literature.
