We will continue to lead the country.

For months we have been debating whether the Federal Reserve will raise rates one more time this year and more specifically when they meet next week. We analyze the data, listen to the speeches by members of the Fed and then prognosticate to our hearts content. Then something happens which reminds us that predictions are futile. In this case we had another devastating attack on a country across the globe.

Regardless of our perception, we do not exist independently in the world. We can’t control the price of oil by ourselves, nor world-wide inflation.  Pandemics are spread around the globe and wars affect the entire world. The same with the growing prevalence of natural disasters. These events, whether man-made or naturally occurring, are terrible tragedies in which thousands of innocent lives are affected drastically. No one can predict when and how these awful events are going to take place. We can’t predict when these events will happen and we can’t predict how they will affect our economy, interest rates or inflation.

If the effects are negative in some way, we just need to be reminded that there are so many others who are being affected much more drastically. For more than the past century, we have been a world leader, and we are sure we will continue to lead as we help those around the world recover. From an economic standpoint, we have been publishing this economic commentary for 30 years and we have lost count of the times events such as these have reminded us that predictions are merely a guessing game in which real life gets in the way.