Tweet

simon wren-lewis

16 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read

Mixed emotions about the FT mea culpa. ft.com/content/7b6242… “That consensus can be wrong was on display after the 2008 financial crisis, when many organisations — including this newspaper — advocated fiscal retrenchment.“ 1/4

It is good but rare when individuals and organisations admit they were wrong. Our government still hasn't. But the next sentence is misleading. “The facts have changed and economists have, sensibly, changed their minds.” Well some economists maybe, 2/4

but not the majority of academic economists who always opposed austerity. So many words and so much time was spent by me and others trying to get both theory and evidence across to organisations like the FT. It is not luck or chance that we were right and they were wrong. 3/4

The facts did not change. What is missing from the FT leader is any attempt to ask themselves why they got it wrong, and why they pushed an idea that went against basic macroeconomic principles known since Keynes and abundant evidence that austerity would do great harm. 4/4

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @sjwrenlewis

simon wren-lewis

@sjwrenlewis

13 Mar 20

Coronavirus thread. The government's strategy seems to be this. Smooth the peak, but not too much, so enough people get infected so that the virus dies out before the inevitable NHS winter peak-load. If we act too aggressively now, we could slow it right down, 1/7

but we cannot eliminate it worldwide, so it will inevitably come back again. And because you cannot keep society in lock down for very long, the danger is it will come back when you are less able to deal with cases. 2/7

This strategy has an obvious cost and risk. The cost is that a lot of people will die, because you are not trying to minimise cases. The risk is that you cannot get your control right. Cases could explode too fast and the NHS gets overwhelmed in the same way Italy is. 3/7

Read 7 tweets

simon wren-lewis

@sjwrenlewis

24 Jul 18

Thread on Corbyn's speech today, having now seen summary sent to press and 'check against delivery' version. The section that has attracted interest is "A key sentence is “For the last 40 years, a magical kind of thinking has dominated the way Britain is run. We’ve been 1/n

told that it’s good - advanced even - for our country to manufacture less and less and instead rely on cheap labour from abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector. A lack of support for manufacturing is sucking the dynamism out 2/n

of our economy ..“ First point. This appears to be a standard critique of City dominance, and a laissez faire attitude to manufacturing. Not surprising given speaker + audience. Second point. Why the reference to 'cheap labour from abroad to produce'?? 3/n

Read 8 tweets

simon wren-lewis

@sjwrenlewis

13 Jun 18

The 2010 Coalition government, with strong help from the right wing press, promoted the idea that the most important thing a government should do to help the economy is reduce the deficit, even before the economy had recovered from the GFC. 1/n

Acting on that belief, voters elected a Conservative government in 2015. Does that make austerity the right thing to do? Of course it not. It made people poorer. 2/n

The 2010 Coalition government promoted, with strong help from the right wing press, the idea that we had to control immigration numbers to raise real wages and ease the pressure on public services. Voters, realising that EU migration could not be controlled, voted for Brexit. 3/n

Read 5 tweets

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Share this page!

simon wren-lewis

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @sjwrenlewis

simon wren-lewis

simon wren-lewis

simon wren-lewis

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?