Solutions Economic and Market Watch

Join Sam Kem, senior economic research analyst at CFC, as she examines the origins of economics and questions whether today's economists are just custodians of data or architects of ideas. 

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Creators and Guests

Host
Sam Kem
Sam Kem is a senior economic research analyst at CFC, where she is responsible for the management and creation of economic research, writing and presentation materials for internal and external audiences. See Sam's full bio at https://www.nrucfc.coop/content/solutions/en/author/sam-kem.html.

What is Solutions Economic and Market Watch?

Listen to the latest economic insights from CFC experts John Suter, Sam Kem, and Antony Davies.

Sam Kem:

Hello, and welcome to the Economic and Market Watch podcast for the week of April 6, 2026. This is Sam Kem of CFC.

Sam Kem:

Today, we're going to take a step back from the charts, models, and forecast and ask a question that economists often ask ourselves these days: Why do our economic forecast keep missing the mark?

Sam Kem:

Maybe it's not the data that's failing us. Maybe it's our imagination that's gone missing.

Sam Kem:

Let's dive into what I like to call modern economics, a means with no end.

Sam Kem:

You know, it may surprise some people, but economics actually began as a branch of philosophy. I wrote about this in a financial feature published last October with the title, 'From Philosopher to Technocrat.' Long before anyone was running regressions or coding algorithms, thinkers like Aristotle and Adam Smith asked big human questions, like "What is a just price?" or "What determines the wealth of a nation?"

Sam Kem:

Back then, economics wasn't about spreadsheets or GDP reports. It was about understanding human behavior, what we value, how we make choices, and why we do what we do. But somewhere along the way, things changed. In the twentieth century, economics became a professional field. Society developed sophisticated tools, econometrics, forecasting, and now machine learning.

Sam Kem:

Economists became managers of systems, policy technocrats, model builders, and data interpreters. That shift seemed logical. The more data we had, the more scientific we could be. But in this process, we traded away something vital, the creative philosophical core of our discipline.

Sam Kem:

Economics stopped asking why and focused mostly on how much. This puts a great emphasis on data. And here's the issue. Data tells a story, but only if you know what world that data is describing.

Sam Kem:

I wrote about this in another article published last November with the title, "Uncovering Hidden Flaws in 250 Years of U.S. Worker Data." It examines a feature in the Wall Street Journal, which looked at 250 years of U.S. worker data with amazing graphics and illustration.

Sam Kem:

But here's the problem. The world of the 1800s and the world of 2025 don't even speak the same economic language. So when economists plug those numbers into models without asking deeper questions, like what does better off actually mean, We start mistaking measurement for meaning. Data is a tool. It's not an idea. It's a means, not an end.

Sam Kem:

And yet modern economics have become so obsessed with numbers, GDP, inflation, and unemployment rates. Those are useful, but they're not the whole story. We've even started dismissing soft data, things like consumer sentiment or business confidence as something driven by politics or vibe. But here's a question worth asking.

Sam Kem:

If politics alone were the reason consumers feel uneasy, why do people remain anxious even when 'their side' is in charge? The truth is people's sense of wealth being, their optimism or pessimism is an economic reality in itself. Economists in the past would have loved to have data on consumer sentiment to test their theory, the wealth of the nation or economic utility and the forces behind it. But today's economists have no theory to test. We only have data, a means with no end.

Sam Kem:

Let's be honest. Other fields are innovating like crazy. Data science, behavioral psychology, and finance are breaking new ground every year. But economics? It seems like we hit a pause. We're mistaking in innovation of other fields as our own, probably because we've forgotten what our field is about.

Sam Kem:

Thanks to innovation in data science and machine learning, our forecast are more sophisticated, but not necessarily better. Every few months, headlines announce that economists were caught off guard again by a recession risk, inflation trend, or consumer spending. Why does that keep happening? Maybe because our models are built without the philosophical questions that they were meant to answer. We have become system administrators, maintaining equations instead of reimagining the system itself.

Sam Kem:

When your job is to maintain the status quo, you stop asking questions that could change it, and that's when innovation dies. So does that mean we economists are becoming the custodians of data instead of the architects of ideas? And where do we go from here? We could start by recentering the most important question in any field, to what end?

Sam Kem:

We could start by asking, what does being better off mean to people today? What does efficiency mean? What are our economic goals in today's world?

Sam Kem:

It's time to bring back the imagination that once defined a field because economics at its best isn't just about numbers. It's about true value.

Sam Kem:

I still remember my first macroeconomics class in college. Within five minutes, I was hooked. There was something magical about using graphs and equations to explain the biggest questions in life, how societies grow, why people make choices, and what drives prosperity.

Sam Kem:

But looking back, I realized that creation, that sense of curiosity stopped somewhere along the way. All graphs today look sharper for sure, but they don't always present new ideas. Modern economics can and should be both philosophical and scientific.

Sam Kem:

If Adam Smith were alive today, would he be running regressions or writing about the ethics of automation? With the tools we have today, I bet he would probably do both.

Sam Kem:

Maybe the next great economist won't just build a model. Maybe they'll pose a philosophical question, one that the model is built upon. Because until economists learn to imagine again, we'll never truly understand the world we're trying to measure.

Sam Kem:

And that's food for thought for today. If you're interested in reading the articles I mentioned earlier, we have links in the show notes.

Sam Kem:

Thank you for listening. Be sure to download the Economic and Market Watch intelligence brief and dashboard. Talk to you soon.