Economists: Mad Scientists Of The ‘90s

Everybody with enough sense to look over his shoulder when walking down a dark alley is now familiar with the stock market’s spooky response to news that a lot of human beings have been fired in another industrial “downsizing.”

The stock market booms.

From this you might sensibly reason that a new high for the Dow Jones is terrible news. (More people out of work, more unpayable consumer debt, fewer buyers for the products of capitalism’s great engines.)

So why are rises in stock-market indicators always treated as good news? Television’s network anchors faithfully announce each day’s Dow Jones average as though it told us something important.

What this might be is seldom explained. On banner days, though, when the Dow Jones breaks 3,000, or 4,000, or 5,000, the anchor always manages to sound as though something splendid has occurred.

Here is one of the mysteries of economics which explain why it used to be called “the dismal science” before governments and newspapers began taking economists as seriously as economists took themselves.

The mystery in this case is one of those “plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face” exercises.

Wherever you go nowadays you meet people worried about their jobs.

Economists of course don’t care much for the testimony of people. “Anecdotal evidence,” they call it, suggesting it is worthless listening to mere people.

However, there are polls - serious, scholarly, scientific polls free of odious anecdotal taint - and they tell the same story: people fearful, unable to keep up, discouraged about the future.

Then there are statistics.

Everybody loves statistics. The statistics show people, in fact, are not keeping up. What’s plain as the nose on your face is that the economy is in the dumps.

So why are these ever-rising market averages hailed as good news? The market would seem to be cheering about another 10,000, or 15,000, or 25,000 workers being fired by yet another great American corporation.

It’s all right for markets to cheer the advance of human misery.

Markets are supposed to be tough guys, steel-whiskered guys, take-no-prisoners guys. It takes insouciance, though, for most of us to applaud the Dow’s latest leap when it so obviously honors another mass firing.

You hear Tom, Dan or Peter tell of another great Dow day in Wall Street, and it’s tempting to not cheer at all, but to think, “By George, they might get me in the next batch.”

Ah, the mysteries of economics …

For instance, do these Washington budget-balancers really believe they can plan seven years ahead with any chance of not being 10,000 percent off their estimates when Time and Chance doth get through happenething to us all?

You and I, friend, may not be Methuselahs, but we have seen enough to know that seven years will almost always produce so many unanticipatable changes that this talk of seven-year budget-balancing schemes must be childishly innocent.

How long did it take for the oil embargoes to destroy the old dollar and produce the tremendous inflation that changed the character of American economic life? It was done in a couple of brutal years. The amazing Reagan budget deficit that haunts us still was designed and adopted in a single Congress.

These preposterous economic upheavals happen constantly. Expecting the preposterous to restrain itself from happening for the next seven years is surely asking a lot of whimsical Miss Destiny.

It’s a lively possibility, in fact, that a single year or two may see the public passion for budget-balancing run out of steam as voters go back to asking their statesmen, “What have you done for me lately?” In the enduring words of Fats Waller, “One never knows, do one?”

Another mystery: All Americans supposedly yearn to scalp and pickle any politician who dares raise taxes. So would somebody please explain the readiness of politicians to slather public money on professional sports-team owners?

These birds of prey are ever ready to move their sweaty assets wherever a fresh batch of rubes is ready to empty the treasury for the joy of having professional jocks in town. Only the wretched, perhaps, deserve to be kept away from the booty.

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