If I hadn’t saved that pig, I would have felt terrible.” The story points out that, sometimes, happiness is nature’s way of telling us we are doing the right thing. True. But, by the same token, ephemeral feelings of happiness are not always reliable indicators we are on the right path. Ultimately, life satisfaction requires more than just happiness.
At the Bundesbank, we are forced to make do without a crystal ball – and this means deploying considerable resources to produce economic forecasts. Strategic planning is a tried and tested instrument used by the Bundesbank to ensure that we are ready to respond to the influences of a dynamic environment at any given moment.