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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

> How many crises do we have to go through before we admit the fed and banks either have no idea what they are doing or they know exactly what they're doing and it's malevolent?

False dichotomy. The Fed can have good intentions, and a good-but-not-perfect idea what they're doing, and things can be working out, not perfectly, but better than they would in the absence of the Fed.

Is there any evidence for that? Yeah, look at the world before the Fed. Look at the "Panic/Depression of 18xx". There's several to choose from. They're 2008-or-worse events, over and over and over.

The economy is a really complicated system, with lots of humans (and their emotions!) as part of the system. It's really hard to tune it perfectly. That doesn't mean that the Fed is either malicious or incompetent.

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Exactly. Economics likes to pretend it is a hard science because it has mathematics and formulas and hard numbers, but it's not. It is much closer with a social science, where work has either big assumptions or is much closer to a study about the market's behavior. But because economics has masqueraded as a science, we expect it to be more exact than it really is, and I think that dissonance can be quite impactful to how we see the fed as it tries to make decisions at times like this.

Please.

One look at Norway tells me this is malarky.

If Norway can have such a stable economy and society, why can't the rest of the world?

What have they figured out that has eluded everyone else?

Sitting atop the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, accumulated over decades of judicious management of national oil wealth, perhaps insulates Norway from realities that apply elsewhere.

What does standard of living look like in Norway? What about wealth inequality?

Now do Sweden

As much as the rest of the Nordics hate to admit it, Norway's economy is far more stable than those of their neighbours, including the Swedish one.

I wouldn't say far more. As long as oil is in high demand, sure, 50% of their exports are shipping reliably. But Sweden's GDP is 30% larger, much more diversified, and will withstand the eventual contraction of petroleum based income. Take a look at their respective exports:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Norway_Exports_Treem...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_Export_Treema...

Now check GDP per capita. :)

Sweden has twice the population and what? Three times the landmass?

Sweden also does not have an oil fund where it invested much of the dino profits from the last 60 years. The Norwegian one won't last forever, but I'd bet it'll last longer than any of us.

Don't get me wrong; Sweden has a decent economy and the standard of living is still amongst top-20 on the planet. Norway just struck black gold and scored higher.

I’m no expert, but I wonder what the long-term socioeconomic effects are of Sweden not having been involved in major wars or colonial empires for hundreds of years.

Should we also look at Qatar or UAE?

I think 3dbrow's answer is the correct response, but would also like to say is that economics is much larger than just monetary and fiscal policies at a state level. This is one of the reasons that behavioral economics has flourished in recent years, to help push back against some of the underlying assumptions that don't match human nature.

It also looks like Norway's economy is also having some trouble during this time [0], like many other nations. And finally, we need to be careful comparing specific economies like Norway to other nation's economies. Each country's economy is different, and prescribing something that works in an oil-rich, northern European country will probably not work in other parts of the world.

[0]: https://www.ssb.no/en/nasjonalregnskap-og-konjunkturer/konju...

Interesting podcast about copying Nordic countries to make ourselves happier: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/season-10-episode-25/

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