Article in The Week advocates combining monetary and fiscal policy.

I.e. the article advocates simply printing money and spending it (and/or cutting taxes). Quite right.

Unfortunately that’s too simple a solution for many professional economists. All professionals like complexity. That’s first because complexity makes them look experts in something or other. And second complexity keeps them in work.

No one explained that phenomenon more clearly that one of the all time greatest economists, Adam Smith. As he put it, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…”.