Economists Struggle With Hard Questions : QE 4? QE 5 - 6 - 7? Debt?

All one has to do to understand the motivations of most economists is watch the business channels on TV. Everyone has a different take on what has happen to our economy and where they think it going in the near future. That they have diverse opinions is a good thing which leaves the final decision on what the truth is up to the observer.

But even in the face of day to day real economic outcomes, many economists still cling to their agenda that the fed spending more money we don't have is a good thing. Even when the fed chairman raises an eye brow when asked a question on whether he will start to pull back on his buy-back on bonds, the market falls two hundred point in minutes.

Asking these economists why this occurs, they say the economy isn't strong enough to operate on it's own. Asked to speculate on when the economy will be strong enough, they have no real answers.

So how long will the fed spend 85 billion per month of monies when don't have? Years? I wonder how this will effect the debt ration to GDP in the near future?  Is this really a good idea or should the fed just say enough is enough, and let the chips fall were they may.

It's like the alcoholic or drug addict that has to break the habit, there is only one way and that's through determination to succeed no matter how difficult. Do it now, pull on your big boy pants, or face personal and financial destruction. It's a choice.

The Social Responsibility of Economists
Source: Peter Boettke, "The Social Responsibility of Economists," Mercatus Center, August 15, 2013.
August 21, 2013

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, the economics profession has been criticized for its apparent complicity in promoting the interests of corporations and the financial industry at the expense of the public interest, which has resulted in increased scrutiny of professional economic ethics.

Peter Boettke and Kyle O'Donnell of the Mercatus Center argue that the only social responsibility of economists is to maximize their career advancement within the scientific community of economists, and that the appropriate target for criticism and reform is the institutional framework of the scientific community.

Good science does not require "good" scientists, but good rules of scientific engagement that foster the constant contestation of ideas through open, critical discourse among scientists. If there is a problem of the corruption of economics, the true source is not corporate and special interests, however, but the state's capture and politicization of the discipline.

A code of conduct, as several critics have proposed, would be a wholly ineffective solution and largely irrelevant to the economics profession.

• In the view of Boettke and O'Donnell, economics should embrace a radical humility, where the role of the economist is a humble student of society, or lowly philosopher who has epistemic modesty.
• These conditions constrain the economist to a humble position in society, reduce opportunities for the corruption of economics, and limit the potential harm from the economist qua social engineer.

What matters is that ideas are constantly subject to contestation by one's peers, and that the ideas that become part of the public discourse are subject to the contestation of democratic decision making.

Just as the market process does not depend on the motivations of individual actors to generate socially beneficial outcomes, but on the institutions within which those actors pursue their self-interest, so too does the institutional framework shape the course of the scientific process and whether scientific knowledge progresses, stands still, or regresses.