“The correct answer, I am afraid, is that we have virtually no economic use for national accounts.” If only Sir John Cowperthwaite were around to address Claudia Sahm, the latest Federal Reserve economic planner to win fawning acclaim from her fellow economists, along with media members captivated by mediocre thought. The quote that begins this piece comes care of Hong Kong's financial secretary from 1961 to 1971.
Cowperthwaite famously wouldn't allow government officials in Hong Kong to calculate economic growth. Activity on the island was far too dynamic for the low-imagination types who populate the economics profession aiming to measure it, plus government measure of anything has a tendency to be economically perilous. That is so because politicians invariably want to “do something” in response to the economic slowdowns real and imagined divined by a profession that actually thinks war is stimulative, plus the economists who claim an ability to measure things are only too happy to help them “do something.” Sahm is one of those activist economists.
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