Dallas Fed Chief–FOMC Forecasts “Pure Guesses”

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

It is getting rough in the corners at the Fed. More of the central bank’s members are acknowleging that they believe recent forecasts which extend well into 2014 cannot possibly be realistic. No one can see that far into the future, so to make policy without a foundation is careless, at the least.

Richard Fisher, head of the Dallas Fed made is explicit that he believes that the last set of FOMC comments about interest rates and economic activity are at the least useless and probably counterproductive.

In a speech he said

the economic forecasts and interest-rate projections of the FOMC are ultimately pure guesses

If that did not make his views plain enough, he added

 I have yet to find a single economist on this planet who consistently forecasts the economy accurately, let alone projects with any precision the interest rate on overnight funds one year out or far into the future. If you examine the record of the Blue Chip economists or even of our superb Federal Reserve staff, you will find confirmation of a paucity of reliable economic forecasts.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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