When we at Ingram's first launched our highly successful Industry Outlook series, we wondered whether we would soon exhaust all possible topics. After all, how often could we talk about banking, say, or economic development without repeating ourselves?

The answer, we discovered, is just about as often as we like. The changes in the state of the nation and the economy create a dramatically different canvas each time we convene to picture a given industry.

As a case in point, consider the prototype for Industry Outlook series, our economic roundtable held in October 2000, just two years and a seeming lifetime ago. We admit that evaluating the predictions of these economists today is no fairer than screening a ref’s call through instant replay. Hindsight, of course, gives one an unfair advantage. But since prognosticators know the risks they run, let us oblige them in their risk taking.

Given our use of weather metaphors throughout, the breezy headline of that article read, “Regional Economists Predict Mostly Sunny Skies.” The five high-profile economists who participated might have better predicted the clouds that gathered at the tail end of 2001, but even the CIA missed the storm of Sept. 11.

Their consensus on the consumer front back then was that confidence would remain high, and in this regard the economists were largely correct. It is consumers who have been pulling the economy by its heels through these otherwise sluggish last two years.

The economists also believed that retail sales would remain strong but not as strong as in the past, and in this they were accurate as well. They believed, too, that job growth in the region would continue but at a slower rate. Why? The lack of qualified workers for all occupations. Today, that is not such a problem. Ask the folks who work/worked at Sprint or Aquila.

Some of those present two years ago believed business services should prove the strongest growth sector, followed perhaps by other professional services and state and local government. The Arthur Andersen factor played havoc with this scenario, and declining tax revenues have put the brake on government growth.

As to inflation, there was no real consensus, but most believed it would stay reasonably low, as it has. No one predicted that interest rates would stay as low as they have as long as they have, but then again no one could have predicted the wrenching effects of Sept. 11 and the need to stimulate investment.

As attested in this month’s Banking and Finance Industry Outlook, the prediction that “the regional economy will continue to grow, if a little bit slower than recently, but more surely than the national economy” has been borne out. But among all the predictions our economists were asked to make, this one was among the very safest. Stability is one of the underrated virtues of life in Kansas City and one that makes the regional economists’ task a wee bit easier.