I agree it would be a mistake for the layperson to infer strong causation, especially in the middle of the issue - I was more musing that this is the sort of op

I agree it would be a mistake for the layperson to infer strong causation, especially in the middle of the issue - I was more musing that this is the sort of opportunity where a student in law or economics could someday get a Ph.D attempting to answer it properly with data. (It doesn't seem impossible to normalize for the impact of fed policies across industries, for instance.) I hope someone does it and shares the paper with me. :)