It is the moral compass, not the academic credentials

The weeks that surrounded the illegal and suspended declaration of independence in Catalonia coincided with a 4% reduction of the retail sales in the region, the exodus of the headquarters of 2800 firms (among them, the two largest banks and some of the most important companies), the fall or postponement of tourist reservations and investment plans, and the transfer of savings to accounts in other regions. It is tempting to conclude that pro-secession leaders lack any knowledge of the economy or any knowledge of the mechanisms of the rule of law in a European member-state of the XXI Century. We could easily blame bad selection mechanisms in political elites or even the poor educational system in general in Spain and Catalonia. However, the Catalan pro-secession movement and the regional government that has represented it in the recent past have been supported by first-rate intellectuals, among them several economists with a PhD from US universities, philosophers fluent in Germany and experts in Wittgenstein, or legal scholars with previous high reputations among their peers. On October 10th, the day in which the now sadly famous Catalan former president Carles Puigdemont said that he acknowledged the results of the illegal referendum of October 1st and then added that he suspended the declaration of independence temporarily, his cabinet met in the morning prior to that Parliamentary speech to decide on the strategy. In that meeting, all the members of the regional government agreed that it was better to suspend the declaration and try to offer a more moderate face, given the hundreds of companies that were already announcing that they were leaving the region and given the zero prospects of international recognition. Only one member of the regional government disagreed from her by then scared colleagues by proposing to go all the way down and declare independence immediately without fear of any consequences. That was the regional Minister of Education, an economist with a PhD from Minnesota University in the USA. Today Paul Krugman has written in his blog about the betrayal of many intellectuals of the US Republican Party, their refusal to apply scientific or moral standards when they evaluate the policies of their party. Krugman alludes to the title of a famous book ("La Trahison des Clercs") by a French intellectual in the first half of the XXth Century, where he denounced the many intellectuals that supported nationalism or stalinism. We could similarly refer to the betrayal of many intellectuals, Catalan edition (incidentally, one of the Republican intellectuals mentioned by Krugman is a co-author of one of the most radical Catalan economists). In the blog of the LSE there is a review of a recent book on how European governments are these days more and not less crowded with academics. The regional Minister of Finance and Economy of Catalonia was in October a Historian with a PhD, like Gordon Brown. The difference does not lie in the academic credentials (although I suspect that the PhD dissertation of Mr. Brown was much better than the one written by Mr. Junqueras). The difference lies in the moral compass, which in the case of Brown made him give that famous speech against nationalism ("the silent majority will be silent no more") that most probably decided the 2014 Scottish referendum.