The economics profession is very good at keeping secrets. For instance, there has been very little discussion of how the effect of US fiscal austerity in 2013 was offset by monetary stimulus. One year ago Joe Weisenthal wrote a story that shows another example of the secretive nature of economists. He points out that economists were reluctant to publicly thank the Brits for running an experiment on monetary stimulus at the zero bound:
The Entire World Of Economics Is Secretly Thankful To The UK Right Now
Economists might not say it publicly, but privately, everyone is extremely appreciative of the UK right now.
That’s because the UK has been a great laboratory of economic ideas in recent years.
For one thing, the Cameron government came in with a mandate to undergo austerity, and now people are talking about the country going into a triple-dip recession.
Furthermore, the Bank of England has hired Mark Carney (the former Bank of Canada) chief to be its next governor.
Carney is speaking today at Davos, taking the contrarian viewpoint that monetary policy is not maxed out in most countries.
So Carney’s strategy at the BOE should be interesting to watch, to see if he could conjure something up to reverse the UK’s slump.
All I can add is that over the past 12 months economists have done brilliant job of keeping the results of this experiment secret. Economists should be put in charge of the CIA.