Economists

From The Associated Press, 29 November 2009
“In 1982, as now, headlines were bleak. Many economists were forecasting a long, anemic recovery. The usual engines of job growth seemed idled. The U.S. was losing its industrial edge to an emerging Japan. People were hoarding gold. The downturn was called the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Sound familiar?
Yet all the grim warnings turned out to be misplaced. By 1984, the economy was humming. Reagan was re-elected in a landslide. One of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history was under way, lasting for nearly two decades — with a few bumps.
Right now, economic policymakers are unsure of the road ahead and they lack a good map.”

Their view hasn’t changed a great deal since then.

It is hard to say whether they, and their sycophantic media allies, really believe that, or that is just what they are SUPPOSED to say, to appear to be the calming voices of reason and perspective. What these maybe thinly informed or deceptively palliative folks do by this though, is give the perception of abysmal ignorance and appraisal abilities. Because still focusing on the “usual indicators” doesn’t take into account that we had relatively little debt and trade deficit at the start of the Reagan era. Now we’ve had nearly 30 years of MASSIVE debts, massive trade deficits, and misbalance of payments. We are appreciably weaker.

Here’s the conversation we’ll be hearing from new powers if we don’t deal with reality VERY soon, with big changes: “You arrogantly, ignorantly, and stupidly thought yourselves immune to economic reality. You weren’t. It might have been delayed, but now it is come. Twist in your misery; you brought it mostly on yourselves.”

Because these economists, who we have worshipped like they run some plainly predictive hard science that can deliver the manna, don’t really know (as they occasionally admit): Greenspan, Bernanke, none of them. It is not a science, and they are struggling in the semi-dark. We need to quit listening to them so much; we look a bit like superstitious ancients readily awaiting for the pantheistic cleric to deliver the pronouncement as he examines the entrails for clues! Virtually no one is out there questioning economists’ often faulty assumptions, and only a few question their predictions. These economists plug their figures into models with delusional assumptions, and then dismiss anything (like environmental or social impact) that can’t fit their model! And their prescriptions largely benefit the plutocrats only anyway, and merely placate briefly (at best) everyone else.

It’s not that they haven’t made great strides in many areas, they have. It’s that we’ve elevated them to quasi-godhood, and that’s wrong.

I have a fair amount of confidence in and respect for the pronouncements of many academic economists. I am deeply skeptical of the pronouncements of most corporate and even government economists. It all seems to me to come down to…who are they serving?