What I could live with

In his links of 8/23/2019 Mark Thoma quotes Summers and Stansbury:

In an environment of secular stagnation in the developed economies, central bankers’ ingenuity in loosening monetary policy is exactly what is not needed. What is needed are admissions of impotence, in order to spur efforts by governments to promote demand through fiscal policies and other means.

Thoma doesn't say that he agrees with the statement, but I figure he does.

I don't. Sure, "admissions of impotence" wouldn't hurt. But the rest of that sentence bothers me: "in order to spur efforts by governments to promote demand through fiscal policies and other means." It suggests that the authors know what policies are needed.

Figuring you know what policies are needed is a good way to create problems. Especially after the problem our policies created a decade ago, economists ought to be very hesitant to jump into anything. Especially if they want to jump into the same policies we had before, or the ones we had before that.

If the quote said that admissions of impotence are needed in order to spur efforts to question everything we think we know about the economy, I could live with that.

As is, no way.