He pontificates as usual:
For the fact is that running a business is nothing at all like making
macro policy. The key point about macroeconomics is the pervasiveness of
feedback loops due to the fact that workers are also consumers. No
business sells a large fraction of its output to its own workers; even
very small countries sell around two-thirds of their output to
themselves, because that much is non-tradable services.
For years I had a sign:
"If all else fails listen to the customer!"
Talk of feedback! No matter how good you are customers must buy the stuff you make. As a business man you see the effects of your policy real time and you understand feedback better than any economist!
Ever hear of a Board dumping an economist! Just look at the overload at universities and the government. Just look at Romer, she stated that the Stimulus would do X and it did A. Fired, not really, writes on economic policy at the times.
I am a Darwinian and Spenserian at heart, survival of the fittest. Business does that, it tests the market and ones ability to respond to it. Now I do not include bankers here, in fact after the past few years I exclude them. The only thing that can get a banker fired it appears is saying the wrong thing about the administration, or really being away from the switch.
Krugman does not seem to understand business. It is not some Asmovian world, it is a market, a place where one can succeed or fail, depending on both your performance and the response to the market in toto.
Would I want some MIT Aero Prof who may understand the theory at the stick of a supersonic fighter in a dog fight, not likely, unless they flew for the Israeli Air Force perhaps, and I have met a few, but at least the Aero Prof knows how to design a plane. It appears that there is no such ability or consensus amongst economists. Thus the Krugman argument is without any merit. As usual it appears.
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