[caseysoftware]

That's the Keynesian view where you can move a lever (cause) and measure the changes (effect).

Unfortunately, there are way too many variables, interactions, etc, etc to have any real confidence in those measures. It's further complicated by the idea that the normal tools (primarily interest rate & money supply delivered via subsidies, etc) are beyond their "normal" operating ranges.

When the Fed rate was 5% and loans were 8%, lowering rates encouraged borrowing. When the Fed rate is 0.25% and loans are 3-5%, qualified people can get all the money they want.. now what? Do they give money to people who can't pay it back (mortgage crash) or spend it on "shovel ready projects" which take 12-18 months to get started?

Alternatively, when consumer spending makes up 70%+ of the economy, consumer confidence is probably the single most important metric.

This is less engineering and more psychology at scale.

[nl]

That's the Keynesian view where you can move a lever (cause) and measure the changes (effect).

Thats not Keynesian economics at all! Or rather it's a view that people from schools of thought completely opposite to Keynesian also believe.

Does anyone not think this? Eg, Quantitative Easing: does anyone (Keynesian or not) think it does nothing?

[caseysoftware]

Everything does something but it's hard->impossible to directly map cause to effect. The problem is there are numerous causes and effects all playing out at once and they all interact.

Or to put it another way: it's the three-body problem extended to millions->billions of bodies which use psychology+perception as the main force instead of gravity.

[maerF0x0]

also there Nth order effects which are confounding subsequent moves. This is why any idea that a certain party of president leads to good/bad economies is nearly impossible to tell, it could just be a lagging indicator from previous one(s)