The great deficit in truth

The following article is from Michael Baxter’s irreverent, punchy and thought provoking “Investment and Business News” -you can sign-up to receive his newsletter here As the earthquakes became worse, the ancient Minoans demanded blood. Clearly the gods weren’t happy, so it was time to make more human sacrifices.Of course, there were occasions when a blood sacrifice was followed by less seismic activity, which was cited as proof positive that the policy worked. Except of course, from our enlightened position in the 21st century we understand causation.Any fall in natural disasters following a religious ritual was a coincidence. There may have been a time when a leader of a country was also a priest, charged with appeasing angry gods, and such people were held responsible when the gods wreaked havoc, but these days we are a touch more sophisticated. Perhaps you could, at a pinch, blame hurricane Sandy on manmade global warming, but it would be stretching credibility to blame any individual for the storms hitting the US East Coast. Some people across the pond are very anti-Barack Obama, but it seems not even they blame him for hurricane Sandy. Although Obama they say can do his election prospects some good by looking presidential. Yet the logic that says Obama was responsible for the poor US economic performance of the last few years is not much different from blaming a Pharaoh for lack of rain. Two economists who have led the charges against Obama are Professor John Taylor and Glen Hubbard. The argument runs like this. In the past the US has seen much more rapid recovery from a recession. This time recovery has been slower, ergo, Obama is to blame. Some go further, and say ergo Obama is the Devil, meaning maybe he was responsible for hurricane Sandy after all. Martin Wolf, the ‘FT’s’ economic guru, has been crossing swords with Professor Taylor.The prof says that even in the 1930s, the US saw sharper recovery than it is now. ‘Duh’, replies Wolf, ‘that was because after 1929, when US authorities messed up, failed to support banks, and made cutbacks, the resulting contraction in the economy was enormous. Of course growth was higher in the aftermath because it had further to grow from’.   Professor Taylor then compared the US performance today with its recovery in the late 1800s. Wolf countered with the argument that surely it is more realistic to compare the US today with other economies across the world, such as Japan, the UK, the Eurozone, or even China. It takes an extraordinary level of arrogance about the superiority of your country to think the fact that the rest of the world is suffering a very severe economic shock bears little or no relevance to your country. Over at the ‘New York Times’, it’s been a case of daggers at dawn between Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman and Glen Hubbard. According to Hubbard, the US recovery should have been V shaped. In the UK – where the debate is over whether the economy will be W, An elongated L, or even a letter than hasn’t been invented yet – the idea of a V shaped recovery feels like a pipe dream. Krugman says the Romney team is ‘waving’ little things like facts away, because it is politically convenient to do so.   The fact is, of course, that the US economy has been posting figures that we in the UK envy. It may well be that the US recovery has been stronger because it has had less austerity. It is certainly absurd to say that if Obama had been Austerian in his approach, the US recovery would have been stronger. But where both Krugman and Wolf may have it wrong is not conceding that there is any benefit to creative destruction at all. Recession can correct bad habits, remove poor practice, and ensure only the very fittest companies with truly strong business models can survive. The snag is that right now the debate between economists is black and white. Either we need to let the economy correct via allowing failure, or we have a really massive Keynesian push. There seems to be no middle group. Maybe what we really need is both, and economists are so blind to their adversaries’ opinions that they are forcing us to make a choice, when what we really need is the best of both worlds.