[chimeracoder]

> It's a bit late for the economist to come out with this.

This isn't "The Economist" coming out with anything. This is Lexington, a long-running column in The Economist. In journalism, columnists do not reflect the opinion of the publication's editorial board, and columnists receive much greater leeway with their content editorially than other reporters or op-ed contributors would.

The current author of Lexington has only been writing it since 2012, when the previous author died in a car crash. The previous author was, among other things, the foreign editor for The Economist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.