>I note that New Zealand exerts a disproportionate effect on world economics again. ;-) In this case it's because an influential paper by guru economists reached the wrong conclusion by including only one year of NZ data- the worst year- skewing the overall results. Including all the relevant NZ data actually changes the overall study growth rate from -0.1% with 90% government debt, to 2.2 per cent. Your author can go on about applicability of the NZ data- he has a point- but lets focus on how only the worst NZ year with -7.6% growth got included. Basically the entire conclusion of the article, and the economic well-being of millions of people around the world, was allowed to hinge on one year of uncharacteristic poor growth in New Zealand- in 1951. Whether the conclusion turns out correct or not, how is that acceptable? That's the real story here- that a brief event half a century ago in a tiny distant country ends up influencing worldwide policy that affects millions of lives and drove some people to suicide. Seems to me the message has to be that if we can't trust these economists then we can't trust these economists.

Not just these economists... those as well. And that other bunch of guys in the corner.

It seems that, of all fruit, I'll only have a lot of cherries this year. And I'll probably engage some economists to pick them. They seem to be rather good at it.