Say what you will about RBA policy, Glenn seems like a true gentleman:
"One Hogan paper of that era that really struck a chord with me then – I have always recalled its title – was about the issue of revisions to economic statistics. It was entitled ‘How Do We Know Where We Are Going, When We Don’t Know Where We Have Been, Let Alone Where We Are?’.[6] These days the study of revisions to data is an art in itself (though the quality of national accounts data is better than it was in the 1970s). Central banks put huge effort into what has come to be called ‘nowcasting’ – that is, working out what the national accounts probably will, or should, say about the current quarter in three or four months' time when they are released. Some central banks actually ‘backcast’ the recent past, deciding their own version of GDP, not necessarily the same as the one published by the statisticians, in effect foreshadowing revisions to come.[7] The RBA has not gone to that extent, though of course we have seen certain difficulties in assessing the current pace of underlying inflation in our own country over recent months, with reasonably significant revisions to some – as far back as 1978."
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