Saturday, July 22, 2006

On Forecasting

Phil Anderson is Managing Director of Economic Indicator Services

What Phil does is he offers courses to people in Australia to forcast the economy using Georgist techniques.

Basically, a downturn happens every 18 years, which isn't really news to anyone. However, what is important is that they can predicted with a high degree of accuracy by simply following the speculative signs in the land markets.

Some of this is something I've blogged about in the past in my Boom/Bust and the NeoClassical Myth, however his talk is in much more detail.

Alanna Hartzok asked a good question, why 18 years and not some other time cycle like 16 or 21 years.

The answer to that isn't clear and frankly I'm not sure if it's important. However, an interesting theory is it could go back all the way to Henry VIII.

Now, a lot of what Phil uses is something in the commodities markets they call technical analysis. I've personally never been much of a tech analysis type of guy, although some of the methods are hard to deny. Using fundementals the the future can still be forecasted, however dates and accuracy can never be given. I imagine it is more of a personal preference then it has to do with the "correct way" to do things. Which is the fun thing about conferences like this.