I was talking about the gloomy job statistic prediction in the article. You might ask yourself how they could make such a prediction when the numbers in the same article don't even seem to back it up.

A lot of the actual economic numbers have been looking pretty good--at least a lot better than the predicted numbers.

It's all the imaginary "next quarter" numbers that have been depressing. When the real numbers for that quarter show up, and look nothing like the gloomy predictions, suddenly it's all about the next quarter again. I wish I had time to collect some examples from the past year or so.

The same article predicts:

Overall economic growth is expected to slow to a barely discernible 1.5 percent in the current October-December period and weaken even further in the first quarter of 2008.

When the real growth numbers come out eventually (final numbers don't come out until March!), will you remember this number?