I have no doubt she is intelligent, experienced, and has good intentions. But to make the simple connection from physics background, decades away, to today's financial markets and economies strikes me as rather bold.
You need to have thought about things, and you can't (unfortunately) just read a couple of books or articles to "learn" this subject. You are aware how the economics profession as a whole performed over the last few decades?
EDIT: Just recently, I was complaining to a friend that I am thinking about markets and economics now for almost ten years, one way or another, and I am still just speechless sometimes, asking myself wtf is going on or what does this mean etc. I feel there are many things that I still don't seem to get on a deeper, fundamental level. And I like to think I'm not so stupid either. So, I can fully imagine how tough it must be to get into a situation where you actually need to make a call with real consequences for millions of people, for many years to come, on the basis of very, very limited information. Frankly, I feel a sense of history might be of more help to someone in this position than a physics background.
Economics and Quantum Chemistry accually have a lot in common. They are both looking for mathematical shortcuts / models for highly complex systems and use similar tools. So sure reading a few book is not going to give you an in depth understanding of economics, but being able to look at the math and call Bull !@#$ is invaluable.
EX: It is generally accepted that money is created when a bank creates a loan, however, you can make also make a similar argument that it's only when banks fail that new money is created. Both are in some ways true, but the second is actually a more useful when looking at what happens when the economy takes a real dip, because the banks created IOU's not money, but the FED get's to create money to replace those IOU's.
That's not to say Economics is easy, lacks depth, or had no concrete progress. However, there is a wide range of models out there and evaluating there relative merits in the short and long term during such complex times takes deep analytic insight.
There are other alternatives as well, like the one MMT'ers do where money is created when a government spend (and destroyed by taxes). This while bank lending is a zero sum game since it creates a corresponding net negative on the other side of the transaction.
Agreed. But to me she doesn't need to be a subject expect on financial markets. My point was her education has trained to be able to understand models of complex environments. I'd argue that gives her better chance of actually understanding what her financial experts are telling her.
I don't know if this was the above posters intent, but from what I gather lots of qaunts and other statistically minded finance workers have a background in physics because the math education they've received is highly applicable.
You need to have thought about things, and you can't (unfortunately) just read a couple of books or articles to "learn" this subject. You are aware how the economics profession as a whole performed over the last few decades?
EDIT: Just recently, I was complaining to a friend that I am thinking about markets and economics now for almost ten years, one way or another, and I am still just speechless sometimes, asking myself wtf is going on or what does this mean etc. I feel there are many things that I still don't seem to get on a deeper, fundamental level. And I like to think I'm not so stupid either. So, I can fully imagine how tough it must be to get into a situation where you actually need to make a call with real consequences for millions of people, for many years to come, on the basis of very, very limited information. Frankly, I feel a sense of history might be of more help to someone in this position than a physics background.