O mistério da Economia

Alertado aqui para um artigo escrito ali, leio sobre os paradoxos da Economia que me deixam perplexo e sem capacidade discursiva, confiando que quem governa saberá melhor...mas desconfiando sempre de quem promete algo contra o senso comum.
Bem gostava de poder contar com estas surpresas, agora em Portugal. Mas não sei e por muito que ouça economistas de cátedra continuo sentado à espera de poder saber o que só depois se sabe.
 
"10.03.81
Thatcher was so nervous of her internal critics, she'd prevented discussion of economic policy in the cabinet for months. She certainly wasn't going to make an exception for the budget. The result was that when Geoffrey Howe left for the House on budget day 1981 - March 10th - only he and the Prime Minister knew what he'd decided to do.

Only Howe and the PM knew what was going to be announced on Budget day

He announced to a stunned House of Commons that he was going to raise taxes substantially, in the middle of a recession. To do so he used a "stealth tax" that has been used many times since then: he didn't raise income tax allowances to take account of inflation. Only with inflation running at 16% in those days, it wasn't very stealthy. There was also a windfall tax on oil and bank profits that wouldn't look out of place in a budget from Gordon Brown. Headline-writers and commentators were incensed. And economists were, for once, united. Some 364 of them later signed a letter to The Times, claiming that monetarist policies had no basis in economic theory, would deepen the recession and should be abandoned. Everyone who was anyone, it seemed, had signed, including two past and future Nobel Laureates (James Meade and Amartya Sen), several future Blair advisors (including Julian LeGrand and Anthony Giddens) and at least one future Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.
Were they wrong to protest? Geoffrey Howe and Patrick Minford are convinced they were. After all, the economy started to grow again almost days after the letter was signed. That was embarrassing for the economists, to say the least. "