TheMarketForIdeas

Twenty-five years ago, during World Economic History class in university, our professor decided to “indulge in a bit of showing off” (this was long before the Romanian expression translated as “making an arrogance” [a face o aroganță – sic!] became an iconic idiom thanks to the local shepherd + real estate + football magnate Gigi Becali). My professor’s very first words during the very first class were Azúcar Moreno. It was the name of an acclaimed Spanish musical duo consisting of sisters Antonia and Encarnacion Salazar who topped the charts back in the day and had just finished a well-received concert in Romania. The name of the band itself meant “brown sugar”, a self-referential nod to the sisters’ Romani origins. During that semester, the professor took us through various historical eras peppered with hints and references to these two words, discussing at length about routes and resources, relations and regimes, all connected by the “red thread” of the savour of the goods (or the scent of money) and of the colour or the skin (along with the sound of suffering). He did not abandon his eccentricity even during the exam. Sensing a sports-related metaphor in my answer to a standard exam question, he issued me a challenge, again, long before it became a common practice on social media. To earn the highest mark, I had to not only enumerate ten sports teams from the US regardless of the sport or league, but to do it in the (chrono)logical order in which the terms associated with them entered the American vernacular. I walked away from that exam with an “A” (10) and the revelation that skilful wordplays could add value to scientific knowledge.

If I were to nominate one word from the innumerably numerous possibilities that could set the tone for a series of economic lectures, “swift” would be an appropriate candidate. Contrary to the expectations of the present-day youths, a Google search of the term won’t immediately point to the eponymous singer-songwriter who has recently commanded the views, prizes, awards and adulation of audiences worldwide. The main results would instead refer to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). As if knowing that I would be writing this text for a mainly economics-oriented publication (is this merely paranoia, or simply the browser cookies at work?), the search engine’s top result is that very organization’s webpage where it describes itself as the embodiment of “the way the world moves value”. A testament to this statement would be the 40 to 50 million FIN messages exchanged globally on a daily basis, thus encoding transnational transactions between upwards of 11.000 financial institutions from over 200 countries and territories. Another indicator of the importance of SWIFT is the disconnection of Russia from this system as a very harsh sanction levelled against it after its invasion of Ukraine. To be swift (i.e. quick), secure and smooth has become a truism in the transition from Morse code-powered telegraphy to the encrypted tapping on a touchscreen in the era flooded by e-commerce, mobile banking, contactless payments, cryptocurrencies, DeFi, central bank digital currencies, all of which became common phrases in what could be termed the contemporary “Financial Globish” language.

Before venturing towards Taylor’s trills, a “different” kind of course on political economy could be handily offered by the many allegories from the works of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Among the many avenues through which Swift attacks the “economic way of thinking” of his time, one that distinguishes itself from all others is what the iconoclast historian of economic thought M.N. Rothbard termed “quantophreny and metrophreny” which began to penetrate the nascent economic science (at a time before the groundwork laid by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations). Swift thereby criticized blind faith masquerading as scientific conviction in quantitative analysis based on measurements which, on the basis of quasi-mechanical and quasi-geometric approaches, has become the “golden standard” of research in the delicate sphere of psychosocial (and, by extension, economic) phenomena as well. Both Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal contain scathing satires of using political arithmetic as a social policy instrument (which would remain a complex ethical and epistemological discussion in and of itself, despite the alleged consensus and the widespread use in present-day economic theory and practice). Special references were made by Swift to a variety of pragmatic matters of economic rationality and reasonableness, such as the notion that smaller taxes could contribute to the collection of larger revenues (Laffer-style, supply-side), that there are corrupt interactions between economic and political structures (public choice) or that protectionism / mercantilism backfires, perverting the thriving of “protected” economies.

It is beyond doubt that we cannot avoid what has already started being labelled as Swiftonomics. No, it’s not the latest theory or set of policies, but simply the economic influence of the American superstar Taylor Swift. The latest shocking news: the musician is being considered a driver of inflationism! We had barely learned that she is also politically relevant as a potent electoral mobilizer (on behalf of the American democrats although even she couldn’t have breathed any new life into Biden’s chances – in the meantime, replaced by his “deputy”, Kamala Harris, as candidate for the occupancy of the White House and blocker for Donald Trump’s reinstallation). Philip Lane, no other than the chief economist of the European Central Bank, had her on his mind (and not only in his eyes and ears) when speaking of the risk that the stubborn inflation in the service sector could intensify in the wake of the European Football Championship in Germany, the Olympic games in Paris and, alas!, the Eras Tour. The popstar’s European tour de force brings an increased demand for plane tickets, hotel reservations, restaurant meals and all sorts of “trinkets” (e.g., friendship bracelets, a fetish of Swifties as the singer’s fans are sometimes called). Along with this, there comes the trivialization of the classical – decrepit and damaging, some say – idea that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. No, pals, it is either meteorological (during draughts), medical (during pandemics), military (during war), or musical (during Swift’s tours). Therefore, one ought to pay attention to monetary policy when Miss Taylor decides to take things up an… octave!