Hmmm…… I would argue that the incompetence is due to **BOTH** their methods and their incentives. It is a systematic failure of all they are involved in. They were chosen specifically because they conform best to the criteria of the state.

I'd argue though that the incompetence of government workers has less to do with their methodology and more to do with the incentive structures inside government 

SimpleStacker

OK, but it seems there are not a lot of analysts that are worth their salt, now-a-days in the state apparatus, which is our overlord. If their models were working worth a sh*t, we wouldn’t be having the problems we are having now. Especially, in the economic control agencies like the Fed and all of the other regulators.

Rothbardian_fanatic

econ

A Critique of Black Box Economics

No, because any analyst worth their salt understands that black box predictive models aren't going to be as accurate or useful in scenarios not seen in the training data.  Thus, when faced with entirely new situations you'll rely less on a black box predictive model and more on deductive reasoning.