Letters: The irony of economists

This refers to the finance minister's comment on astrologers, economists and oil prices in "Chinese Whispers" (July 9). Economists do make reasonable forecasts but the science of doing so is inexact, sometimes. As Robert Fuoss, former editor of the now-defunct Saturday Evening Post, observed: "An economist is a person who lectures on capital and labour. And the baffling thing is that most of them qualified for this career by having no capital and having done no labour". The world should brace itself for a sustained period of low oil prices, according to experts in the industry. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, says: "The world should 'settle in' for a period of relatively weak oil prices. US shale production is more resilient than many people had expected and demand growth in China and elsewhere has slowed." Those conditions could persist.

H N Ramakrishna, Bengaluru

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