Yesterday it was Bernanke and today it is Carney revising their forecasts on the economic outlook. I like both of these gentleman but given the size of their pay cheques and power over monetary policy - it would be nice if they were right much more often. They both possess a nice vocabulary, nice clothes and high offices but they seem deft at communicating in common sense terms issues of money supply, debts, deficits, productivity, and the real labor market. Could Bernanke in bold terms at least build a case for the consequences of Congress' intransigence in dealing with the nation's fifteen trillion dollar debt.
I just wrapped up "Aftershock" by Robert Weidemer and concur wholeheartedly with his premise that economists are living a life of privilege immune from challenging suppositions from credible alternative economic theorists. It is not the radical thinker that achieves status among the Washington and Wall Street elite. The notional world wide derivative book is still a potential time bomb four years after its role in the financial crisis. In fact, Ben was still touting the benefits of derivatives in non-financial industries yesterday in his address to Washington Senators. There was once a time when non-financial industries simply relied upon insurance to mitigate against market risk but nowadays the derivative instrument becomes the win-win bargain chip which could become the lose-lose stimulant of our next phase of economic decline (the decline that none of these mainstream economists saw coming or were at least permitted to publicly prognosticate).
