Corbynomics and Letters

The Labour leader to be, Jeremy Corbyn, has had two recent letters from economists supporting his economic policies, and a third appears is in the works. I've had the opportunity (twice!) to sign the forthcoming third letter and thought briefly about it before deciding against it. Why?

I think my main reason is the utter futility of it all. I think such letters only ever serve to give credence to the public perception of our profession - notably that anything can be justified with a bit of economic reasoning (maybe plus some hand waving). And as such, everyone can find the economists' letter that most closely accords to their own thinking and use it as evidence to support that view.

The other thing is that these letters make an appeal to the "mainstream" consensus of economics, as if this actually means anything. Simon Wren-Lewis makes the best point about this:

In 2009, most of the world was following mainstream economics in undertaking a fiscal stimulus to combat the impact of the financial crisis. But in the UK a certain politician decided to ignore ‘economic credibility’, and instead proposed doing the opposite: what has subsequently become known as austerity.

Hence departures from "mainstream" economics need not be the stuff of what our press determines to be crazies, but canny politicians.