Posted on 05/20/2020 12:25:03 PM PDT by Thalean
The International Monetary Fund anticipates that the economic fallout from COVID-19 will plunge the world into a recession, the likes of which we have not experienced since the Great Depression. This seems increasingly likely.
Over 30 million Americans have already lost their jobs, and the Federal Reserve estimates that this figure could climb to over 47 million in the coming months. Adding fuel to this fire is the fact that 78 percent of American workers live paycheck to paycheck, and over 30 percent have no savings whatsoever.
There will be lean times ahead. And to whom will Americans turn for guidance? Who will fix the economy? According to the media we should rely on the sage advice of academic economists—“experts.” If they cannot deliver us, no one can.
I hate to break it to academia, but economists are the last people to whom we should be turning for advice about this situation. Why? For starters, their relentless support for economic globalization—for so-called “free” trade—created the international networks which facilitated COVID-19’s rapid spread. More importantly, economists know nothing.
Case-in-point: COVID-19 was the single most important event to impact the global economy since 2008. It has put millions of people out of work. It crashed the stock market. It has fundamentally altered our spending patterns. And yet, a grand total of zero economists—not even one maverick—predicted COVID-19 or anything like it. In fact, it was impossible for economists to predict the pandemic.
This is a big problem for economists—for classical economics generally. If the economy is primarily driven by unpredictable events like COVID-19, which exist beyond the scope of economic models, then what is the point of these economic models? Why should we trust economists wedded to these methods to manage the economy?
Would you trust a blind bus driver? No.
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
That “economists know nothing” is an exaggeration. As always, we should remember that the expert presented to us by the main stream media is the one they SELECTED. The selection process of the nightly news, newspapers, and news magazines is the problem.
The author mentioned free trade and globalization. NAFTA had a lot of people needlessly arguing the merit, or lack of merit, of free trade. The people arguing bought into the lie that NAFTA was about free trade. Well, it’s in the name: North American Free Trade Agreement. But the name was a lie. The agreement was not a free trade agreement. As Milton Friedman said, a free trade agreement can be written in a sentence. NAFTA was more than a thousand pages long. Inspired by President Trump, I say “NAFTA was fake.”
My opinion is that computer models of the economy are not very good. Computer models are merely tools. Rather than genuflect to “models,” I suggest listening to the analyst of your choice. He may use a model, but again, it is merely a tool. To put it differently, having a screwdriver does not make you an electrician. However all electricians use screwdrivers.
In the mid 1980s the press was going on about the earth running out of resources. It was the Global Warming of the time. Anyone with two courses in economics knew enough to reject all that blather. However the MSM did not advance any economists who challenged their message of future shortages and the need for socialism.
What I’ve been wondering is what impact that the knowledge of the attempted coup by the DemonRats will have on the economy, stock market etc. once it is widely known. If one was to do a survey of the great unwashed, it would still likely show that only a small percentage of the population know anything at all about it.... the rest are blithely unaware.
This would seem to be a boiling pot with the lid welded down. What happens when massive amounts of on and offshore investors realize the country they’ve believed and invested in has had a coup going on for the past four years and it was an eyelash away from being successful?
“If one was to do a survey of the great unwashed, it would still likely show that only a small percentage of the population know anything at all about it, [agreed]
the rest are blithely unaware.”
[sort of agree, but you have to remember anyone with a 401k or other IRAs, or other investment vehicles such as money markets CDs, excetera... MIGHT have read the inevestment prospectus only to find that those vehicles all invest in stocks. So it makes the common saver diversified without the headaches associated with activly trading. And investments through one or two simplified methods (of which many experts sort of agree that the IRA) is probably the easiest to get into.
I’ve been saying for years that if all the economists and meteorologist were to switch places nobody would notice.
But I’ve now come to the realization that after the switch, the weather reports would be less accurate...
I mean come on... Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman? I mean who’s been wrong more often than that guy?
Mark
It will be the happiest day of my life when the words “Covid-19” are gone from the lexicon.
This is only slightly off-topic. Screaming headlines from one of OK’s local news sites: “COVID Deaths Approach 300 !!!” BUT . . . see below, from deep within the article:
“Five deaths happened between April 22 to May 18, health officials said Wednesday.” That’s 5 deaths in just under a MONTH. Pretty feeble attempt to keep the fear ginned up.
“What I’ve been wondering is what impact that the knowledge of the attempted coup by the DemonRats will have on the economy, stock market etc. once it is widely known.”
Do you really think that will happen?
The founding fathers of America knew which principles, facts, and natural laws would be necessary to make America great, and they were right. To reject principles, laws, facts, truth, and reason,because one believes reality is unknowable by reason is pragmatism/postmodernism, which is what lefturd loons do. They try to solve problems simply by trial and error and experimentation rather than relying on prior knowledge.
Yes, I do. I don’t think that the average person will know much beyond the basics but I’ve been quite surprised lately at the grasp of the bigger picture that some folks have...... folks that I would never anticipated knowing much about it at all based on discussions that I’ve had with them say a year or so ago.
“COVID-19 Proves that Economists Know Nothing”
Ok, but I can think of better ways to ascertain that.
Let’s hope you’re right.
This current Covid fiasco emphasizes the limitations of 'experts,' especially those based in academia. It's not limited to economics, or medicine.
Life would be much simpler if we could outsource our thinking to 'experts.' In fact there's a lot of social pressure...herd pressure, if you will...to do just that.
Outsource judgment to anyone else, regardless of 'expertise,' and you're asking to be swindled. Human nature makes this so.
Read this book.
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