Herman Stekler Award for Bold, Inaccurate Recession Forecasting: 2015 Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI; Mish 2016?

I received a nice email today from Prakash Loungani. He gave a presentation at the Federal Forecasters Conference yesterday. His presentation was on the inability and unwillingness for forecasters to predict recessions.

Loungani says that to get forecasters to predict recessions (even inaccurately) we should have a Stekler Award for Courage in Forecasting. The award would be in honor of noted forecaster Herman Stekler who has always insisted that forecasters should predict recessions early and often and that he himself has predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions.

The 2015 award would go to Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI, who called for a U.S. recession in 2012 in September 2011. ECRI recently admitted that the call had been a false alarm but gave a detailed and useful explanation for why it made the call.

I am in the running for the 2016 award because in January, I predicted that Canada and the U.S. would slip into recession this year.

The slides are quite funny.



Click on the right and left arrows, not the down arrow.

Link if slideshow does not play. Herman Stekler Award for Inaccurate Recession Forecasting

Related Links

• January 21, 2015: Canadian Recession Coming Up: Yield Curve Inverts Following Unexpected Rate Cut; Loonie at Six-Year Low
• January 31, 2015: Canada in Recession, US Will Follow in 2015 
• September 2, 2015: Canada in Recession with Two Consecutive Quarters of Negative Growth 

Mike "Mish" Shedlock