There’s an open letter - which so far at least we can find no evidence of someone publishing - going around from 58 economists. Stating that the 58 aren’t being economists:

A group of 58 leading economists and politicians, including the former business minister Vince Cable, has written to the chancellor to say that scaling back City regulation will put the UK at risk of another financial crash.

The open letter, which has also been signed by the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Columbia University professor Adam Tooze, was sent in reaction to the Queen’s speech, which outlined Rishi Sunak’s plans to “cut red tape” through a financial services and markets bill.

Adam Tooze in an historian, Varoufakis and Cable are clearly politicians these days but still. It is indeed possible that bad regulation, which can include the idea of not enough regulation, could increase the chances of another crash.

The group of 58 economists, including a Nobel Prize winner and former business minister Vince Cable, said making competitiveness an objective could turn regulators into cheerleaders for banks and lead to poor policymaking.

The NL is Joe Stiglitz which doesn’t help us much in evaluating this - the unkind might suggest he’d lend his name to a note for the milkman.

But this is all evidence that the 58 aren’t being economists. For they’re stating that even to consider competitiveness is to be in error. Which is a breach of that most basic lesson of economics - there are no solutions, there are only trade offs.

Yes, of course we desire a financial system unlikely to crash. But only up to the point where the cost of it not crashing is no more than the cost of it crashing. Within that envelope we desire that it be as competitive as possible - because competitive is a synonym for productive and we really do insist that we want all portions of the economy to be productive. Preferably continuing to be more productive over time as that, in itself, is a synonym for growth - us all getting richer.

To insist that regulation should not consider things in the round, should not grasp that the task is to balance the trade offs - to insist that competitiveness not even be considered - is to be non-economic. Which is an odd thing for 58 economists to go around parading really.

Ah, we’ve just found that Richard Murphy was one of the signatories. Well, that just seals it then, clearly abject nonsense. No need to note those other such indicators, Ann Pettifor, Miatta Fahnbulleh, Nick Shaxson then.