What Have the “Experts” Gotten Right? In the Real Economy, They’re 0 for 5

What Have the “Experts” Gotten Right? In the Real Economy, They’re 0 for 5

by Charles Hugh Smith

The mainstream media continually hypes the authority of “experts,” i.e. people with a stack of credentials from top institutions.

But does the mainstream media ever check on whether the “experts” got anything right?Let’s compare the “experts” (conventional PhD economists) diagnoses and fixes with the results of their policies.

Let’s stick to the big issues: inflation, productivity, near-zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), employment and “growth”. If you get these wrong, you get the entire economy wrong.

If you can’t get the big issues right, your “expertise” has failed: your “expertise” is not just worthless, it’s counter-productive, because if common-sense policies had been put in place instead of the “experts’” fixes, we’d have made progress rather than digging a deeper hole.

1. Inflation. Conventional “experts” believe inflation has been near-zero for the past decade and will continue to be near-zero as far as the eye can see.

Did they get this right? No. Households exposed to healthcare, higher education and rental expenses have seen staggering increases in costs for the same (or diminished) services. In other words, the purchasing power of their earnings has plummeted.

If we measure these “Big Ticket” items, we find inflation rates of 100+% over the past decade. I laid this out in detail in The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001

⇒ Keep Reading  [You will not want to miss the remaining ‘need to know’ information. TLB ed.]

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TLB recommends other pertinent articles at Washington’s Blog

About the author Charles Hugh Smith


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