"""Folks have been predicting this throughout 2010 as well as 2011. The arguments are generally devoid of data, i.e., "based on what we see".""" Actually, "wha

"""Folks have been predicting this throughout 2010 as well as 2011. The arguments are generally devoid of data, i.e., "based on what we see".""" Actually, "what we see" is the very definition of EMPIRICAL DATA. What you probably wanted to say was "devoid of any theory" etc. But no theory has yet untangled the economic prediction thing --too many parameters. A little manual pruning of the empirical data by someone with experience in the trenches is better than some vague theory or a bunch of stats.