Ben Bernanke, the former chair of the Federal Reserve, had a lot to say about the Bank of England’s forecasting process in his April 12 review, much of it not pretty. The bank’s key model has “significant shortcomings”. The forecast that emerges from the BoE’s “complicated and unwieldy” systems is a mash-up of staff projections and the views of the monetary policy committee (MPC), resulting in a projection that, potentially, no-one believes in. Communication, in Bernanke’s view, is hampered