Word: forecaster
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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STANDING somewhere between Nostradamus and a Wall Street broker, the President of the U.S. each year draws up a federal budget-essentially a forecast of events as they are expected to occur as much as 18 months hence. The law requires him to perform this task, but there is no law that says he has to stick to his budget. This extraordinary leverage over the public purse has been gradually wrested from Congress, which over the years has ceded its once jealously held fiscal powers to the White House. Today, the President does not consider the budget just a report...
...budget is by far the most comprehensive one that any government in the world has ever known. But it is necessarily inexact, since it is a sweeping forecast made in January of what the world will be like in the fiscal year that begins in July and ends 18 months after the budget is presented. Is the new budget sound or foolhardy? In the view of many economists, it is apt to aggravate inflation by pumping more money into the economy than it takes out at a time when production is running so high that shortages of manpower, material...
...given a new stature and luster to the men who practice what Carlyle called '.'the dismal science." Economists have descended in force from their ivory towers and now sit confidently at the elbow of almost every important leader in Government and business, where they are increasingly called upon to forecast, plan and decide. In Washington the ideas of Keynes have been carried into the White House by such activist economists as Gardner Ackley, Arthur Okun, Otto Eckstein (all members of the President's Council of Economic Advisers), Walter Heller (its former chairman), M.I.T.'s Paul Samuelson, Yale's James Tobin...
Within the next two weeks, Ackley and his fellow council members will have to give President Johnson a firm economic forecast for the year ahead and advise him about what policies to follow. Their decisions will be particularly crucial because the U.S. economy is now moving into a new stage. Production is scraping up against the top levels of the nation's capacity, and federal spending and demand are soaring because of the war in Viet Nam. The economists' problem is to draw a fine line between promoting growth and preventing a debilitating inflation. As they search for new ways...
Johnson's Law. Taking aim at inflation, however tentatively, the Administration shone the spotlight on business. In a telephone address to the 65-man Business Council, the President forecast record prosperity without inflation in 1966, made it clear that he expected businessmen to exert price restraint to match the effort of servicemen in Viet Nam. Said the President: "We can produce the goods and services we require without overheating the economy." Addressing the meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers a few days later, Richard Nixon evoked many businessmen's feeling that they are bearing the main burden...