Liam Eisenberg for Insider
When it comes to predicting the course of the US economy, the hardest thing to do is pick which battles to fight. For economists and forecasters, it's easy to get extreme — the deluge of data and pressure to be noticed lead a lot of people to declare that the sky is falling or that the boom times are just around the corner. For a central bank such as the Federal Reserve, which is tasked with the even more difficult job of maintaining the balance of the economy, landing on exactly the right amount of support or pressure can be a tough task.