That is my thought as well. How in the world is this supposed to make people confident?

Oh look, you avoid a bad headline of shitty economic projections. Congratulations! But because the economic outlook is so obviously shitty because you refused to release projections, investors lose confidence, the market tanks, and you get a different bad headline. Oh, and the economy still sucks.

fun fact: in accounting and finance research, there is strong empirical support for the ... uh, theory I guess(?) that once you disclose some information, you have to keep doing it in perpetuity. E.g. you're a company and you include reports on social responsibility in your books or start showing revenue disaggregated by country, then you have to keep doing it because if you stop from one period to another, investors are going to assume a turn for the worst happened. So if you fail to provide any information about something, the default assumption is that you're in the worst possible position.