"As they prepare their year-end predictions, economic forecasters must struggle with an unpleasant reality: Nobody thanks them for correctly predicting bad news.</br></br>Economist Rosanne M. Cahn, for example, remembers how odd it felt to be elated over the economy's sluggishness in early 1993 after a strong end of 1992. She was happy because she had predicted the slowdown correctly. As a director in the economics department of CS First Boston Corp., she had advised clients to expect exactly that pattern because of heavy late 1992 spending caused by Hurricane Andrew and early payment of bonuses to avoid expected tax increases in 1993.</br></br>Business Week hailed her as ""the savviest soothsayer of all,"" and colleagues sent congratulatory notes. Despite some guilt feelings, Cahn decided to enjoy it. ""You realize that your happiness is at the expense of someone else's job,"" she said. But for a forecaster, that's life.</br></br>Sometimes being a forecaster makes you feel as if you ""don't have any friends left in the world, but that is just part of the reality of the job,"" said Stephen S. Roach, co-director of global economics at Morgan Stanley & Co.</br></br>The nation's prognosticators don't see anything catastrophic ahead in 1995. Most agree that this year's booming 4 percent growth in the nation's gross domestic product cannot be sustained, but many predict a solid 3 percent gain. (Cahn is more pessimistic at 2.5 percent.)"