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(Aside: I love your username, haha.) They do it because, unlike our profession, it's hard to find out when you're wrong right away so they read a lot of compet

(Aside: I love your username, haha.) They do it because, unlike our profession, it's hard to find out when you're wrong right away so they read a lot of competing theories and know that the models are only pale comparisons to all the swirling forces and incentives. What's the likelihood of the DPRK giving up their nukes in the next 5 years? 0.1%? Well if they do it will have massive ramifications on Asian and global security. Moving billions of dollars around. And so on. So they hedge. And the usually use squishy language when they talk to the public. But for finance professionals they talk more in terms of distributions of outcomes or possible complications. It's a messy science.

MagnumOpus 6y ago
It's worse than that... Rather than the DPRK, take the US election. A toss-up before the 3rd of November, with massive ramifications on fiscal policy and therefore GDP growth and currency strength. I truly shake my head at the software developers who expect economists to give an accurate point forecast of a binary coin-toss, and then deride their expertise as a sham when they describe the scenarios that follow the two outcomes instead. (And also shake my head at voters who believe "economists" hand-picked by politicians to affirm their policies. In a profession of a million people you can find one to support any policy even if 99% of the profession don't agree -- just like you can find a "computer scientist" who will promise you self-driving cars on the street within three years if you just pay him a million dollar consulting fee.)