The title on the second volume of Robert Skidelsky's massive biography of John Maynard Keynes is The Economist as Saviour.
Skidelsky wrote in the introduction of how, after the First World War, Keynes — the economist who would make the world rethink how the economy and governments' role in it can work — found himself "in a world emptied by war of its old faiths and certainties; one in which monsters prowled, ready to devour what remained of Europe's civilisation".
Among Keynes' other legacies was the elevation of his profession in the eyes of governments and the public.
Economists — for so much of the second half of the 20th century, and long after Keynes had gone slightly out of fashion — seemed such an anchor of reassurance about what was happening in a confusing world, and confidence about their policy solutions for making things better.
Getting economists to give you the measurement of a problem felt like you were halfway to solving it.
But COVID-19 sees economists in the same sort of empty world Keynes found himself a century ago.
No-one knows what's going to happen next
This week, the Government announced its plans to start winding back the income support rolled out in the first days of economic collapse that came with a global pandemic.
It also released a revised "economic and fiscal update" which tried to bring to account what had happened to the economy in the past few months (and as a result, the federal budget), and then take the wildest of stabs at what was likely to happen next.
It's not that the numbers are rubbery, or full of political skullduggery.
They are just completely unpersuasive because no-one knows what is going to happen next and because, well, the economic picture they paint just doesn't seem to hang together.
Consider the forecasts for the financial year that has just begun. The forecasts are for household consumption to fall 1.25 per cent; dwelling investment to fall 16 per cent; and business investment 12.5 per cent (including a 19.5 per cent fall in the non-mining sector).
Public demand (the impact of the government on the economy) is forecast to grow about the same as it has in the past couple of years, while exports will be down 6.5 per cent (and net exports down 0.5 per cent) while the terms of trade is forecast to fall 12.25 per cent.
That's a rather large number of negatives. Yet somehow the forecasts still contain a graph with a rather elegant V-shape in the recovery.
Sure, that might be driven partly by the fact we are coming from an off-the-cliff slump in the June quarter. But the outlook contains some optimistic statements about how there are good signs abroad about businesses slowly getting back to work.
A reminder of how 'perilous' things remain
"Consumption growth is expected to pick up strongly in the September quarter on the assumption that health restrictions broadly continue to ease in all states except Victoria, accompanied by an improvement in both labour demand and confidence," the outlook states.
This seems to ignore the fact that what is happening in Melbourne doesn't just have an arithmetic effect on economic activity, but a massive psychological one, too.
Businesses across the country may be reopening but Melbourne reminds them of how perilous things remain.
Assumptions that things will just resume normal programming, that borders will reopen around the country and, specifically, that international borders can open from January 1 are reasonable enough, if you have to guess, but they feel pretty heroic at this point.
That is especially true given that the winding back of income support is going to reduce the amount of spending in the economy.
So there are short term questions about what the Government should be doing for the economy just now, which it certainly didn't answer on Thursday.
It painted the scenery for the drama and has now gone on smoko until the budget in October. That seems a perilous delay when the economy is on such a precipice.
Restarting the economy
Then there are the long-term questions about how we restart, and remake, the economy.
The Prime Minister said on Friday that "our goal is to create jobs and to reduce the effective rate of unemployment".
On Thursday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was asked whether he was hoping the economic numbers would act as a springboard for the wide-ranging, nothing-off-the-table economic reform that has been canvassed by Scott Morrison in the last couple of months in order to boost jobs.
"I can tell you the first cab off the rank will be labour market flexibility and a continuation of the industrial relations reforms that accompanied the JobKeeper introduction," he said.
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