For more than a year now, orthodox economists and the mainstream financial press have been struggling to process the idea that an intentional strategy of deploying thoughtful public investments in key sectors like clean energy and computer chips might actually be a good thing for the economy. While that might not strike you as a tough thing to grasp, these are people who have long been completely bought into the idea that The Market Is Always Right and Always Best Left Alone. And perhaps they deserve some sympathy as they process the early results of Bidenomics — because it’s never easy to be so deeply wrong.

As a recent Financial Times interview with Harvard’s Dani Rodrick shows, progress is being made: most of the piece is a sharp, coherent, and evidence-based examination of what these strategic investments have looked like and how they have actually played out around the real world. All in all, it’s a big advance from just staring at abstract economic models. But then things regress when the conversation gets down to actual human beings, as Rodrick states that he’s “less enthusiastic” about “the additional objective of creating good jobs.” Why? Because, he says, “[t]here’s a kind of disconnect between the design of these policies and the objective of good jobs.” But if economic policy is disconnected from jobs, then… what’s the point? Literally: what is economic policy even about if it’s not about creating good jobs? And why on earth would the interviewer not ask that very question?

Make it make sense.

For most of us, getting life insurance can be a good way to protect loved ones from financial disaster in a worst case scenario, but it’s not particularly fun or even all that interesting — there's a reason “life insurance salesman” is a notoriously boring profession often used for comic effect. 

But it’s a different story for the ultra-wealthy, who increasingly dump huge amounts of money into accounts called “Private Placement Life Insurance,” manage them like any other complex investment, and reap about $40 billion in tax benefits as a result. This type of insurance is exclusively offered to the highest earners by design — just 0.003 percent of all individual insurance plans are PPLIs, which is understandable when you consider that premiums start at about $2 million. But like a lot of things, it’s a great deal if you can afford it: as the chart below from the Senate Finance Committee shows, this currently legal tax shelter for a vanishingly small number of people produces returns that grow far faster than a standard investment account that requires people to actually pay their taxes. 

Neoliberal economist Larry Summers has long been notorious for being wrong about… well, everything… while projecting the special confidence of a second-generation economics professor who has been wrong about…well, everything. And as you might expect from that bio, he’s run in important policymaking circles for so long that a corporate interest looking for credibility can buy a certain measure of legitimacy simply by associating themselves with his name. That’s a key reason why he serves on so many corporate boards.

But as the Revolving Door Project highlights, these corporate associations are looking increasingly suspect. Summers recently — and suddenly — stepped down from the board of Block, which, among other things, owns CashApp… which was revealed to be under investigation for money laundering just a week after Summers's sudden departure. Summers made similar exits from the boards of LendingClub and Digital Coin Group right around when scandals broke out at those companies, too. It’s starting to look like Summers is not just a contrary indicator of economic trends — he’s a contrary indicator of fiscal credibility, too. 

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