Economic mechanisms: Beware of consensually held yet spurious ideas
In recent weeks, a number of apparently consensual analyses have been published and reproduced by many commentators and media outlets concerning mechanisms that are central to explaining the current state of the economy. Unfortunately, we show that these analyses are wrong and yet are disseminated without being subject to a sufficiently rigorous examination. They concern the role of the “trade war†between the United States and China , the capacity of the United States to carry out foreign exchange interventions , and the implications of an inverted yield curve (lower long-term than short-term interest rates).