When Bullard makes an economic forecast, don't forget what he said in 2013 via ForexLive

St Louis Fed President James Bullard isn't afraid be being wrong.

“If you've followed my forecasts, you've probably lost a lot of money,” he said in 2013.

He's been so bad at economic forecasting that he makes fun of himself yet he still gets out there and confidently states is forecasts for the future. With that kind of atitude he could be chief US economist at Deutsche Bank.

He says that “excluding Q1″ he sees US growth exceeding 3% in the second half and 2015. The thing is, you can't just “exclude” the 2.1% contraction in Q1 because just getting back to even adds more than 2 percentage points to Q3 growth and much of that will be spread over the remainder of the year.

For his future +3% GDP growth forecasts, you don't have to look for to see how bad Bullard has been:

• In 2012, he forecast rate hikes in 2013.
• He forecast 3.5% growth in 2013 (it was 2.2%)
• In January, he forecast 3.2% GDP this year (the consensus is 2.1% now)
• If he's wrong, he doesn't have answers. He called low inflation “a mystery” earlier this year

Finally, he said the whole forecasting thing is just a shot in the dark anyway:

We [central banks] do not really forecast anyway. What we do is we track the economy. Most actual forecasting day to day is really just saying: What is the value of GDP last period or last quarter? What is it this quarter? And what is it going to be next quarter? Beyond that we predict that it will go back to some mean level which is tied down by longer-run expectations.

Bullard saying to add 6 months to whatever his rate forecast is

posted via ForexLive