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Podcast: Notes on the Week Ahead
Episode: The Challenged Consumer
Description: My first job out of graduate school, in the early 1990s, was as the consumer economist for the economic consulting firm of DRI/McGraw-Hill, in Lexington, Massachusetts. One weekend each month, we would run a U.S. macroeconomic forecast. (It always had to be over the weekend, as this was the only time when we could get our own clients off our mainframe computer.) Anyway, on Saturday afternoon, having produced some preliminary numbers, we would gather around a huge conference-room table and discuss how the forecast was shaping up.Â
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My colleagues were smart and seasoned econo...