From the Street.Com.

By James Padinha Economics Correspondent 10/26/99 3:24 PM ET

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. -- And today we consider a few things ahead of the third-quarter gross domestic product (or GDP) numbers to be released Thursday.

(a) Bet the over.

The Philly Fed is constantly asking about 30 professional economic forecasters -- people who get paid to predict economic numbers -- what they think GDP will do next quarter. The most recent Philly forecasts and reality (and the gap between them) appear in the table below.

                     The Side of a  Barn 
GDP		     Predicted	     Actual	Miss
1999 Q3		     3.3%	     n>3.3%!?	Big!?
     Q2		     3.2	     1.6	1.6 Over
     Q1		     3		     4.3	1.3 Under
1998 Q4		     2.4	     6		3.6 Under
     Q3		     2.1	     3.7	1.6 Under
     Q2		     2.4	     1.8        0.6 Over
     Q1		     2.5	     5.5	3   Under
1997 Q4		     2.7	     3		0.3 Under
     Q3		     2.6	     4.2	1.6 Under
     Q2		     2.5	     4		1.5 Under
     Q1		     2.2	     4.2	2   Under
1996 Q4		     2.1	     4.2        2.1 Under
     Q3		     2.5	     2.1	0.4 Over
     Q2		     2.9	     6.1	3.2 Under
     Q1		     1.3	     3.3	2 Under

Mean Absolute Deviation of forecasters:   1.77.

Fools I MAD error:                        1.94.

Fools II MAD error:                       1.41.

Actual mean is 3.86.

If we could have used that the error would be 1.09.

Fed Link.