I was surfing Inman Blog when I found this article at the News section. David A. Lereah said in a Wall Street journal article about how he was pressured by executives to issue optimistic forecasts during his position as chief economists National Association of Realtors (NAR), just to later get blamed when things didn’t go well. He was known for talking about the downturn of housing market. Lereah left the association after seven years of doing everything they wanted him to do. He then participated in a secretive project at Realtor.com in mid 2007 until the project was later canceled. A spokesman from National Association of Realtors said that David A. Lereah used similar forecasts in his book with those that was not published by the giant trade group.
Read the complete articles at this link. It’s really interesting as many think economists make forecasts independently and they are really from their analysis. We can not blame people without knowing what is behind him.