ABSTRACT
The only certainty we have is that any prediction of the future will be wrong. No matter with what expertise we consider our chosen field, there will always be shifts, abrupt dislocations that are, by their very nature, unpredictable. A recent forecasting experiment asked for predictions of a number of key financial variables over the period 1984 to 1994. The authors of the report kindly, and not surprisingly, anonymized their respondents, since government finance ministers from around the world performed less well than a group of dustmen!1
