“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”
— Someone smarter than us; a while back
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George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright and rabble-rouser, often gets credit for that little gem, which is both funny and true at the same time. But no one really knows who said it first. It probably wasn’t an economist.
Doesn’t matter. It gets proven over and over again any time one of those cable news shows about the financial markets comes on, or when you read the Wall Street Journal or Forbes. It seems that every news development is good, or bad, for the current economic situation. It can leave one the impression that when it comes to the economy, no one really knows what they’re talking about.
The Federal Reserve’s efforts to, with apologies to Gerald Ford, whip inflation now also seems to prove the point. To wit: We must fight inflation, which is bad for the economy because it reduces…
