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> There's no credit given to economists for the recessions or depressions avoided. I don't think we have avoided any recessions, ever, based on the advice of e

> There's no credit given to economists for the recessions or depressions avoided. I don't think we have avoided any recessions, ever, based on the advice of economists. They just aren't that good at forecasting. They don't even agree on the policy that is appropriate to fight recessions when we know there is one. The "grandstanding" against economists in this thread is entirely justified.

mywittyname 6y ago
Also, economies aren't easy to control: We can't even get people to wear masks even though the economic impact of not doing so is obvious and relatively straight-forward to calculate. An economist could come from the year 2100 with 500TB of economic data and news for the past 100 years, and there's a 0% chance that the public would ever heed their warnings.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Not at all. Sweden never wore masks and never shut down schools and yet they achieved comparable results to draconian lockdowns. They already have herd immunity. It's likely we would get 2 economists from the year 2100 both giving opposite reasons for the next 80 years of events.
  - luckydata 6y ago
    They don’t have yet herd immunity and their results are worse with respect to all comparable countries that had a lockdown. What you say is categorically false.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      It’s not much worse as you would expect it to be, though.
    - twblalock 6y ago
      There are definitely countries in Europe that locked down and yet have a higher per-capita death rate than Sweden.
      - luckydata 6y ago
        Comparable aka Finland and Norway, which have similar climates, healthcare systems and culture. Check the numbers and tell me if Sweden is doing better.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      No, their results by any metric aren't worse than all comparable countries that had a lockdown. They're in the middle of the pack and only because they had a lot of deaths in care homes, which lockdowns don't protect anyway. There are other regions that prove this like Belarus, South Dakota and others, but Sweden is proof positive that lockdowns aren't necessary and were never necessary. As for herd immunity, Google "sweden covid cases" and look at that graph. Then change it to deaths. Sweden is practically done with the epidemic. Cases will never drop to absolute zero due to high testing levels and false positives, but it's now down to tiny levels and deaths have hit zero with no "second wave" in sight. At least based on current data it appears Sweden is over and done with it.
  - jamie_ca 6y ago
    Sweden's got 10m people, and 87k cases as of mid-Aug. That's less than 1%, so claiming "herd immunity" is BS. They also have almost 6k deaths. Analysis from a month ago projects Sweden's GDP falling 4.8% in 2020, and eyes a 3.6% growth in 2021 - overall down 1.4% across both years. Denmark's got a little over half the population, 1/5 the cases, 1/9 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 5.1% this year, up 4.0% next year, overall down 1.3%. Norway's got half the population, 1/11 the cases, 1/22 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 4.7% this year, up 3.7% next year, overall down 1.2%. If you're saying Sweden didn't lock down and achieved comparable economic results to their neighbours, I'd say yes you're right. A little bit worse on GDP, but very comparable. But they also had thousands more deaths, and tens of thousands more cases with uncertain futures, to no economic _benefit_ that I can see. Sources: - https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in-the-nordics/ https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in... - https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/nordic-economies https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/nordic-economies
    - nradov 6y ago
      We don't know the real herd immunity threshold. It had been previously estimated at about 70%. However daily average deaths in Sweden are now down near zero even though there are minimal pandemic control measures, and seroprevalence studies have indicated an exposure rate probably below 20%. So what accounts for the current situation? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
      - thu2111 6y ago
        Seroprevalence only measures anti-body resistance, but SARS-CoV-2 is quite similar to common cold viruses and it appears many people have pre-existing immunity to it for that reason. Or so goes the theory. The 20% antibody threshold seems to be fairly common across many countries however, at least outside non-China Asia/Pacific countries that were not badly affected at all. The body learns how to fight viruses and can do so quite quickly.
    - cipher_system 6y ago
      The 87k are the verified cases, there are a magnitude more cases. So there is some herd immunity in some areas which may with the current or possibly a bit more lax precautions be enough to keep the new cases at a fairly low level in the fall and winter. Still of course no full herd immunity in all areas. Some epidemiologist say that we'll live with this virus for 30 years and that pretty much everyone will get it sooner or later. If that is the case some countries have only postponed the inevitable. Or vaccines or better treatments will soon be available and distributed to a couple of billion people, in that case the harder lockdowns saved some lives or months/years of living.
TheCowboy 6y ago
Public policy, monetary policy, and fiscal policy all have empirical evidence in support of them, demonstrating the usefulness of the field. Your comment does not.
- AngrySkillzz 6y ago
  Backing you up here. There is a clearregime change in the data before and after the advent of central banking. Recessions and financial panics are less frequent, and less severe. Just looking at the US, there were ~15 recessions since the adoption of central banking in the 1910's. In the same time period during the 1800s there were >25 recessions, and that's not even comparing for severity. You can see the Wiki[1] for an overview. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...
  - twblalock 6y ago
    Are you counting the recessions caused by central banking policies being mistaken or outright wrong? There have been at least two in the USA in the past century that can be directly linked to the Federal Reserve, and who knows how many in other countries. In the USA the two are the Great Depression (which the former Fed chief Ben Bernanke has argued was largely the result of Fed policies) and the early 1980s recession caused by the Fed increasing rates in an attempt to combat inflation. (It worked, inflation dropped, but many people lost their jobs.)
    - AngrySkillzz 6y ago
      Sure, many people make that argument. The recessions happened regardless of their source. But the financial panics that preceded lenders-of-last-resort and countercyclical monetary policy were significantly more frequent and severe than anything we've seen in recent history. Edit: just noticed your edit, Bernanke never said that monetary policy caused the Great Depression, but it is the consensus view that policy was too tight during that period and exacerbated it. A mistake that no one is keen to repeat. Certainly the interest rate rises in the 80's caused a contraction, one could argue whether the subsequent recession was worth the cost of fighting inflation. I think all would agree that the stagflation that prompted that maneuver was not ideal.

mywittyname 6y ago

Also, economies aren't easy to control: We can't even get people to wear masks even though the economic impact of not doing so is obvious and relatively straight-forward to calculate. An economist could come from the year 2100 with 500TB of economic data and news for the past 100 years, and there's a 0% chance that the public would ever heed their warnings.

chrisco255 6y ago
Not at all. Sweden never wore masks and never shut down schools and yet they achieved comparable results to draconian lockdowns. They already have herd immunity. It's likely we would get 2 economists from the year 2100 both giving opposite reasons for the next 80 years of events.
- luckydata 6y ago
  They don’t have yet herd immunity and their results are worse with respect to all comparable countries that had a lockdown. What you say is categorically false.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    It’s not much worse as you would expect it to be, though.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    There are definitely countries in Europe that locked down and yet have a higher per-capita death rate than Sweden.
    - luckydata 6y ago
      Comparable aka Finland and Norway, which have similar climates, healthcare systems and culture. Check the numbers and tell me if Sweden is doing better.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    No, their results by any metric aren't worse than all comparable countries that had a lockdown. They're in the middle of the pack and only because they had a lot of deaths in care homes, which lockdowns don't protect anyway. There are other regions that prove this like Belarus, South Dakota and others, but Sweden is proof positive that lockdowns aren't necessary and were never necessary. As for herd immunity, Google "sweden covid cases" and look at that graph. Then change it to deaths. Sweden is practically done with the epidemic. Cases will never drop to absolute zero due to high testing levels and false positives, but it's now down to tiny levels and deaths have hit zero with no "second wave" in sight. At least based on current data it appears Sweden is over and done with it.
- jamie_ca 6y ago
  Sweden's got 10m people, and 87k cases as of mid-Aug. That's less than 1%, so claiming "herd immunity" is BS. They also have almost 6k deaths. Analysis from a month ago projects Sweden's GDP falling 4.8% in 2020, and eyes a 3.6% growth in 2021 - overall down 1.4% across both years. Denmark's got a little over half the population, 1/5 the cases, 1/9 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 5.1% this year, up 4.0% next year, overall down 1.3%. Norway's got half the population, 1/11 the cases, 1/22 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 4.7% this year, up 3.7% next year, overall down 1.2%. If you're saying Sweden didn't lock down and achieved comparable economic results to their neighbours, I'd say yes you're right. A little bit worse on GDP, but very comparable. But they also had thousands more deaths, and tens of thousands more cases with uncertain futures, to no economic _benefit_ that I can see. Sources: - https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in-the-nordics/ https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in... - https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/nordic-economies https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/nordic-economies
  - nradov 6y ago
    We don't know the real herd immunity threshold. It had been previously estimated at about 70%. However daily average deaths in Sweden are now down near zero even though there are minimal pandemic control measures, and seroprevalence studies have indicated an exposure rate probably below 20%. So what accounts for the current situation? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
    - thu2111 6y ago
      Seroprevalence only measures anti-body resistance, but SARS-CoV-2 is quite similar to common cold viruses and it appears many people have pre-existing immunity to it for that reason. Or so goes the theory. The 20% antibody threshold seems to be fairly common across many countries however, at least outside non-China Asia/Pacific countries that were not badly affected at all. The body learns how to fight viruses and can do so quite quickly.
  - cipher_system 6y ago
    The 87k are the verified cases, there are a magnitude more cases. So there is some herd immunity in some areas which may with the current or possibly a bit more lax precautions be enough to keep the new cases at a fairly low level in the fall and winter. Still of course no full herd immunity in all areas. Some epidemiologist say that we'll live with this virus for 30 years and that pretty much everyone will get it sooner or later. If that is the case some countries have only postponed the inevitable. Or vaccines or better treatments will soon be available and distributed to a couple of billion people, in that case the harder lockdowns saved some lives or months/years of living.

TheCowboy 6y ago

Public policy, monetary policy, and fiscal policy all have empirical evidence in support of them, demonstrating the usefulness of the field. Your comment does not.

AngrySkillzz 6y ago
Backing you up here. There is a clearregime change in the data before and after the advent of central banking. Recessions and financial panics are less frequent, and less severe. Just looking at the US, there were ~15 recessions since the adoption of central banking in the 1910's. In the same time period during the 1800s there were >25 recessions, and that's not even comparing for severity. You can see the Wiki[1] for an overview. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...
- twblalock 6y ago
  Are you counting the recessions caused by central banking policies being mistaken or outright wrong? There have been at least two in the USA in the past century that can be directly linked to the Federal Reserve, and who knows how many in other countries. In the USA the two are the Great Depression (which the former Fed chief Ben Bernanke has argued was largely the result of Fed policies) and the early 1980s recession caused by the Fed increasing rates in an attempt to combat inflation. (It worked, inflation dropped, but many people lost their jobs.)
  - AngrySkillzz 6y ago
    Sure, many people make that argument. The recessions happened regardless of their source. But the financial panics that preceded lenders-of-last-resort and countercyclical monetary policy were significantly more frequent and severe than anything we've seen in recent history. Edit: just noticed your edit, Bernanke never said that monetary policy caused the Great Depression, but it is the consensus view that policy was too tight during that period and exacerbated it. A mistake that no one is keen to repeat. Certainly the interest rate rises in the 80's caused a contraction, one could argue whether the subsequent recession was worth the cost of fighting inflation. I think all would agree that the stagflation that prompted that maneuver was not ideal.