SIGN OF THE TIMES? Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel business columnist Tom Saler asks readers to Stay tuned for 'America's Next Top Economist'.

It's a little sad - and probably a bit revealing - that more people could identify Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian than William Dudley and Thomas Hoenig.

Hilton and Kardashian are famous for being, well, famous.

Dudley and Hoenig have résumés of considerable distinction. Each holds a doctorate degree in economics; serves as president of a Federal Reserve regional bank; and assists Chairman Ben Bernanke in making decisions that affect millions of lives worldwide.

On the one hand, the passage reeks of elitist smug. That rabble, how dare they go through life unaware who the people are who are making the important decisions? On the other, in a division of labor society, each of us depends on others, and the very measure of a successful division of labor is in the important decisions that happen in relative obscurity. From that perspective, the fact that, despite an economic recovery looking more like a seven-year recession, a few people can still bring home large rewards for making a train wreck of their lives is itself a measure of prosperity.

With Uncle Sam out of fiscal ammunition, monetary policy is the last line of defense against history's seemingly preordained sentence of seven years' penance for nations allowing massive credit bubbles to inflate and burst.

Fiscal policy soon will turn into a headwind, though it's debatable if any candidate for public office could be elected by forthrightly detailing the specific spending cuts and tax increases necessary just to balance the federal budget given an aging population, much less pay off the national debt.

But in an entertainment-driven culture in which realistic and critical thinking is too often in short supply, fantasy is a big seller.

Meanwhile, there will be no television cameras trained upon the 27-foot mahogany table at Fed headquarters around which Dudley, Hoenig, Bernanke and other policy-makers will gather Tuesday and Wednesday to chart the nation's economic course.

That's also a little sad, because if their deliberations were beamed into American living rooms, it would make for reality TV that really mattered.

Perhaps so, but, like a faculty meeting and unlike the over-the-top aggression portrayed in Mad Men, the deliberations would be marginally more interesting than a golf broadcast with the sound off.

The deliberations in China's central bank would be much more interesting even without translation. Dear reader, every time you hear somebody complain about China artificially undervaluing its currency, take the time to understand the monetary policy its bank must be involved in to arm-wrestle the invisible hand, and educate yourself in strategies to profit from the day the invisible hand wins.