Article published by Mr. José Carlos Francisco in La Gaveta Económica in the January 2016 issue.
The work of a futurologist is neither simple nor grateful, and much less so in economics, where forecasts are expected not to be a mere qualitative story, but rather a set of concrete data on variables that are also very specific and within certain time periods.
Some serious futurologists evaluate the quality of their forecasts as a formula to improve future analysis. Without going any further, the global Investment Director of one of the large Swiss banks acknowledged that “many things happened that were not foreseen in our base scenario for 2015”, and then recounted eleven very transcendental events that occurred during the year, and that were not part of his crystal ball.
At Corporación 5, we have been making quarterly economic reports since 1996 and have been incorporating forecasts for the Canarian Economy for ten years. Along these lines, we prepared a report in 2009 that was published in my book "The necessary reform. Canary Islands in the face of the crisis of our lives" in 2010 (pp. 43 et seq.). What we tried to predict was in which year we would once again have a situation similar to that of 2008. Our estimate was that we would achieve production, measured by GDP, similar to 2008, in 2013; for GDP per capita we would have to wait until 2017; those employed in 2018; and a strike similar to that of the second quarter of 2007 would only be possible for the 2020s.
Those predictions had quite an impact and caused alarm because they were excessively pessimistic. But the truth is that after six years, the harsh reality indicates that we were optimistic.
We can now venture that in 2016 or 2017 we will achieve a production of goods and services similar to that of 2008; and only in 2021 will we be able to have the same people working. This means that the adjective “crisis of our lives” is not at all exaggerated, and that it well reflects the difficulties we face, which will last no less than twelve years (2008-2020), and which explain the assertions of “we have overcome the recession, but not the crisis.”
