Hikes and Massages may be harmful to you

After giving my presentation (with the arcane title "Supply Chain Integration as a Marketing Lever: An Enhanced Conceptual Model for Customer Relationship Management") at the NARTS conference, I drove to the Phoenix Mountains with the intention of running a few miles up the mountain. However, as soon as I started running, there appeared before me a hiking trail with a couple of people of people starting the journey. I abandoned my running and decided to hike the trail. After reaching close to the summit point, realization dawned that a) running a few miles is quite different from hiking, b)I was in no physical shape to undertake a hike of this sort, c) I should have gathered data about the trail and got the right tools (shoes) before the hike. After completing the hike I read about it and found that it was one of the steepest and most strenuous hikes in the country (4 stars).
These are the lessons that are applicable to the U.S. economy and its population at large. As Andy Grove of Intel might put it, the economy and the standard of living are at an 'inflection point.' Given the daily dose of bleak news about the economy, some of my students and friends keep suffering from anxiety attacks and ask me to prognosticate about the immediate future. While recognizing that I might appear sillier than any Wodehousian villain, I will lay out in the next few posts a few ways of looking at the 'landscape' ahead and figuring out whether the country is prepared for the 'strenuous hike' ahead. However, there is good reason to tell any forecaster to 'take a hike.' To make forecasts with some level of confidence, one needs data, clean data. Unfortunately, we have to rely on public (and sometimes private) agencies for quite a few economic numbers. Often, these numbers are massaged, some by statisticians, some by bureaucrats and some by politicians. This will be the subject of the next post.