But even extremely optimistic forecasters like Mr. Shepherdson said the key to sustained growth was a strong acceleration in job creation.

Other forecasters, more optimistic than Mr. Baker, predicted that growth would reach 2 percent in the current quarter.

Even the most optimistic forecasters, though, never expected the Japanese to change their mode of social operation overnight.

Even the most optimistic forecasters, however, fell short of the approximately 4 percent that has turned out to be the actual growth rate in calendar 1994.

Yet even the most optimistic forecasters expect only 27 million digital phone subscribers by 2009, just 15 percent of the fixed-phone-line market.

As a result of that plan, he says, the deficit dropped sharply, and "the economy has improved far more than even the most optimistic forecasters predicted."

"Before the numbers came out, the most optimistic forecasters said the February increase would be no more than 200,000."

Not even China's most optimistic economic forecasters had seen this coming.

But even with such help, optimistic forecasters say the Soviet economy has a minimum of two years of tremendous turmoil ahead.

Even optimistic forecasters predict that economic growth will slow in the months ahead.