EU finance ministers and other honchos gathered yesterday afternoon and today to consider a coordinated policy response to the depression and the financial crisis. But there's only any point in coordinating policy when we have a pretty good idea what the best thing to do is. If we really don't have a clue - if we admit we are in "uncharted waters" and eighteen months of endless policy initiatives has been making things worse rather than better, demonstrating (in case there was any doubt) that we really don't know what the best thing to do is - then coordination is a device for everyone getting things wrong in the same way.
Better, when you don't know what to do, would be for each of us to try our own thing. Then we can look around at what others have tried and what seemed to be working better or worse, and gradually iterate towards some kind of solution. It's obviously politically attractive to all herd together - that way who can blame you if you get it wrong? Herding is what everyone tends to do in conditions of great uncertainty - we see it in wild stock market fluctuations, in the lending policies of banks, in business decisions in the wider economy. But we should not let our politicians get away with that. Herding is nothing more than political cover. It isn't a constructive policy.