People by and large know today that a boom brought forth by a policy of credit expansion and easy money cannot last forever and must sooner or later lead to a slump. They do not want to be taken by surprise and ruined. They are anxious to learn in time when the turning-point will come because they plan to arrange their affairs early enough so as not to be hurt by, or even to profit from, the crash. As they believe that economics is the art of predicting tomorrow’s business conditions, they consult the economists.
“How will business be in the coming months?” asks the newspaperman when interviewing the economist. No convention of businessmen is held without the solicited presence of a professor of economics, or the head of a bank’s research department, who in guarded language produces a cautiously qualified prediction about the k nation’s (or the world’s) business. Whenever and wherever a businessman catches sight of an economist, he tries to sound him out about the future state of the market.
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