Economists are always too optimistic about the world

Every once in a while, you'll hear that some economic data point missed economists' expectations and that GDP growth forecast have had to be revised downward.

It's a scary sounding thing as things no longer sound like they'll be as good as they could be.

Is that bad?

"Consensus expectations of growth have proven consistently too optimistic, leading to systematic downward revisions," Citi's William Lee said.

And yet we live in a world that's growing.

It's interesting to see trends in these revisions. But it's important to note that revisions in forecasts reveal more about the economists than the economy they're covering.

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