What intelligent economist would take work from this administration? There aren’t many unintelligent economists, and it’s not the sort of thing you can fake your way to a PhD in. With the U.S. branch of the field run aground on its refusal to identify the causal link from shareholder profits to inflation, failure to deliver solutions that don’t decrease profits is a certainty. So it makes perfect sense that they’d seek competent help offshore: any untried port in a storm of your own making.
altairprime says >"There aren’t many unintelligent economists..."<
How can you tell? Hell, with a few notable exceptions, maybe the entire field is largely a waste of time and money.
"Show me a successful economist and I'll show you a man who has not made an accurate forecast" - attributed to former United States Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III.
Intelligence doesn’t imply wisdom, nor correctness, nor even common sense. You have to be able to do a certain amount of mental gymnastics to certify as an economics PhD, is all. That doesn’t affect the odds of whether economics is ultimately found to be a waste of time and money, though it’s useful enough at delaying a possible reckoning.