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Everything has it's time.
The trivial insight into the transience of all earthly things also applies to political institutions, economic theories and social behavior.
That is why it is neither high treason nor nest pollution to question again and again whether old wisdom, knowledge and facts are still valid and whether reality or everyday life are as good as possible.
Rather, it is part of scientific honesty and political survival to always critically examine whether old braids should not be wisely cut off because other institutions, theories and behaviors are better suited to new times, changed zeitgeist and changed circumstances.
The grand coalition becomes the gravedigger of the council of experts
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The question of whether successfully practiced methods of the past are still able to cope with current and future challenges arises again and again, but now the most necessary time, at the “Advisory Council for the Assessment of Overall Economic Development” - the Olympus of economics.
Whoever sits on the Council of Five Wise Men has reached the summit.
More is not possible.
Now a dispute has broken out within the grand coalition as to who should be given the honor of belonging to the circle of illustrious spirits.
Lars Feld, who has been chairman for almost a year, is not to be reappointed.
It is seen by leading social democrats as a “black cloth” because it represents more conservative than red ideas.
This turns the grand coalition into the gravedigger of the council of experts.
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No other economic body has even come close to having the influence and reputation of the five members, whose task it is to act as an "advice of independent experts" in an annual "report to present the respective macroeconomic situation and its foreseeable development" (according to the legal requirement from the founding year 1963).
It is crucial that the Expert Council “assesses” and not “advises”.
The small but subtle difference is crucial.
Because the five wise men are neither advisors to the federal government, nor are they part of its ministries or administration.
According to the law, they are "independent experts" who are explicitly not allowed to belong to the government and certainly not to private interest groups.
According to customary law, the unwritten law has established itself to grant employers and trade unions the right to propose one of the five positions.
Nonetheless, the current practice contradicts the spirit and purpose of the demand for independence.
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It is crystal clear in the law that the members of the Expert Council “must not be representatives of a trade association or an organization of employers or employees”.
One did not want and should not appoint people to take orders, but independent spirits who are really not obliged to anyone.
What at first glance may seem like legal subtlety to outsiders becomes the fundamental point on closer inspection.
It decides on the political status of the economic modes.
Because with the explicit demand for the independence of experts, Germany has taken a completely different path than many other states that also consult scientific expertise for political decisions.
In the USA, the experts are very close to the President
In the USA, for example, the three-member Council of Economic Advisers, which has existed since 1946, is deliberately not understood as an independent body that carries out its analyzes in the quiet scholarly room (in Germany at the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden) far from government and politics.
Rather, the American experts are very close to the president, who appoints and dismisses them largely at his own discretion.
They are close advisers in the presidential staff - roughly comparable to personal employees in the Federal Chancellery.
The connection to day-to-day political business ensures that the government and economic experts see themselves not as opponents, but as a community.
And the experts cannot give advice without feeling the consequences for themselves and directly.
If they advise the President badly, they can expect to be dismissed.
That is why it was one of the first decisions made by the new US President Joe Biden - even before he took office - to get rid of the members appointed by his predecessor Donald Trump as quickly as possible and to replace them with people of his own choice.
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The fact that he was chairing Princeton professor Cecilia Rouse, who had already been a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under Barack Obama, is more than a symbolic sign that the Expert Council will again be heard more than under Donald Trump.
As in Germany, the main task of the American body is to prepare an economic status report on the economic situation once a year.
In the United States, the experts in no way become puppets
As with the German Advisory Council, the Council of Economic Advisers must collect and analyze data, identify longer-term trends, evaluate political decisions and propose alternative or more far-reaching measures to the US government.
Even if the experts in the United States are at the mercy of the president, for better or for worse, the experts in no way become puppets who dance to the will of others.
The list of previous council members reads like a who's who of economics.
With James Tobin, William Nordhaus and Joseph Stiglitz they included Nobel Prize winners, and with Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the new US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen later central bank presidents.
All of them remained highly esteemed independent scientists - with a professional reputation that most German experts can only dream of.
The best of the guild were and are in the USA ready to take the risk of abandoning science in order to advise the president very personally and very directly.
As outstanding personalities, they can evidently deal with becoming professionally dependent for a certain period of time and still remain independent in their thoughts and actions.
And the presidents - with the possible exception of Donald Trumps - knew and know perfectly well that they don't need jumping jacks, but independent external spirits.
So they have no interest in belittling their own people.
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Why shouldn't the American model also be possible for Germany?
Then money would not be spent on bodies that should be independent, but which are always threatened with the sword of Damocles of a refused reappointment.
Instead, a resilient, lasting relationship of trust could develop between the brightest experts and the politically responsible, which would help everyone: Scientists because theoretical concepts were tested for their economic policy relevance, the government because they received useful expert advice, and the country because more economic expertise leads to better economic policy.
It would be wiser to listen to longstanding SVR member Bert Rürup
Nobody wanted and needs a council of wise men, in which dependent government representatives and representatives of employers or trade unions sit.
It would be wiser to listen to Bert Rürup, long-time member and chairman of the Expert Council.
He notes that the time for independent expert councils is up.
And he is right: the Advisory Council should be replaced by a Council of Economic Advisers.
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“Everything on shares” is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team. Every morning from 7 a.m. with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz. For stock market experts and beginners. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and Deezer. Or directly via RSS feed.