Sadly, One Letter Perfectly Captures the Recovery
I used to think it was silly using the alphabet to describe the economy. But no longer.
The economic recovery like no other.
Photographer: George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images
In the early days of 2009 following the Great Financial Crisis, I received an extremely silly email from a booker for a television program who asked: “What single letter would you use to predict the recovery?”
My response noted there were 26 letters that humans could use to form words and even sentences to express complex thoughts. I explained that it was wrong to dumb down something as intricate as the economy to a letter of the alphabet or some other symbol. The correct thing to do was to use prior recoveries as an historical guide while acknowledging our inability to accurately forecast the future. Why, we could even add numbers to those words, explaining probabilistic assessments and possible future outcomes that are so superior to predictions!