My New Favourite Mug
Leaving in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown is somehow fittingly strange and unexpected. My 22 years at ING, mostly as Chief Economist, marked an unforgettable period of shocks in economics, politics, technology, society and, increasingly, the environment. The thread running through this is what I like to call the New Abnormal. This is a world which is structurally in a state of flux, which consistently defies attempts to define a return to a ‘new normal’. When some start talking of the ‘next normal’, you know that hopes for a comforting period of stability are on shaky ground.
This line of thinking lies behind my longstanding humility about what I called my ‘day job’: macroeconomic forecasting. I provided a critique in my post entitled ‘Confessions of an Economic Forecaster’ . If anything, the social, digital and environmental transformations that we are going through intensify the fundamental problems for macro-economic forecasting, at least as it commonly practiced. Looking ahead, I’m going to continue to explore the implications of these transformations. And for that, I’m keen to keep drawing on a diverse range of experts and sources.
Mark Cliffe 