Thomas Carlyle, Scottish philosopher, coined the phrase “dismal science” in economics to describe his inability to get the slaves in the West Indies to conform to any rational order of thought about the subjects. Supply and demand never held that men should be so subjugated when in fact Carlyle believed, as so many “experts” did, that certain men should. The phrase has survived as so often the “discipline” focuses on a very narrow subset of typically dour subjects.

In a broader turn lately, economists and those sympathetic in the media have seemingly set out to overturn it entirely. Almost everywhere it has been in full practice economics is being shown as unscientific as witch doctory and voodoo (to borrow George H. W. Bush’s electoring), fully resistant to reality. For the modern approach, the economy lives in regression equations, and since regression equations describe a part of the world then the world should behave like regression equations. That is enough for an economist, but it has no part of science.

On the other end, economists are rarely dismal these days. In fact, there is no shortage of optimism in the profession. Everywhere you turn, an economist will tell you about how things are going to be better. Every nook and cranny, every turn and twist, are made out to be “evidence” of just that approach. The sunshine of economics is so impervious as to be confident in dismissing all twists inconvenient to that narrative. We got a taste of that yesterday in the Wall Street Journal’s curious changing of facts but not interpretation.

That has been taken to another order today with the Bank of Japan and “everyone” falling over to declare it well and good, another signal of how great it will be just around the corner. To believe it as they do is to require ignorance of Japan’s sobering fate, one that is taking place at this very moment in direct opposition to all those past cheerful promises.

Not to be left out, there is as much positive disposition in Europe this morning. “Inflation” as measured officially “accelerated” from 0.3% to 0.4%.  Below is taken from an article that was “artfully” titled, Euro-area Inflation Picks Up From Five-Year Low on Stimulus, but now just reads Euro-area Inflation Picks Up From Five-Year Low: Economy.

Euro-area inflation accelerated from a five-year low in October, offering some reprieve to European Central Bank policy makers struggling to prevent a spiral of price declines.

ABOOK Oct 2014 Europe Madness Working

However, to follow that narrative is to completely ignore, again, the twists and turns that are typical in any account. An accurate description, which is supposed to pervade journalistic commentary, would be far more cautious and contextual:

ABOOK Oct 2014 Europe Madness Working Not Really

I may be showing my own bias in this regard, but I sense a growing desperation to this very point. And small wonder, the entire orthodoxy and even the status quo is at stake here. They promised full and broad recovery, taking any and all means, especially repression and control, to achieve it (Keynesian means at that), and nothing has worked. Instead, as it turns out, there is also the very real danger that “they” have actually not just failed but made it worse.

The palpable dissatisfaction that permeates the general public is set directly against further notations of just such insufficiency. It has been seven years (going back to the months in 2007 when these very same people said not to worry at all in the first place) and nothing has turned out as promised. Each and every failure is instead met by simply doing the same thing in greater quantity or intensity (or both). We may have arrived at the point where insecurity in the “sunshine ideology” is heightened so much that they must mark every little change in the “right” direction and assign it the greatest importance.

Of course, in the end, that only highlights the impotency further because context is never absent no matter how much it shuffled out of sight. They can keep saying about “stimulus” and recoveries whatever they want, but facts speak otherwise and eventually a search for something with actual potential will begin in earnest. That is feared by the orthodoxy far more than continued bad economic reality; thus the unending and ill-suited optimism.