A book he wrote in 2006, which is based on statistics from 20 years of forecasting, became famous for its conclusion that “the average expert is about as good at predicting what the future holds as a dart-throwing chimp is at hitting the bullseye.” His new book was published in 2015, and is also based on tracking the forecasting abilities of a great number of people.
Not only that, but the constraints on credit that periodically had been flaring up over the preceding year became more widespread, and are likely, if they persist, to have significant effects on economic activity in many countries and on trade between them.