Economists of all persuasions have recently found themselves talking to new audiences. 

It must be a terrible strain to be asked to explain your art to folks who respond to your finely tuned lecture with a question along the lines of:  “You made frequent mention of the real economy.  What exactly is the unreal economy?” 

We all have crosses to bear in these credit-crunched times but it seems to have come as a shock to those who normally talk amongst themselves that non-economists, whilst they may appreciate a fine exposition of the fiscal and monetary tools available to combat recession, seem to imagine that there is surely something more that can be done from within their own specialist sectors.

Are, they might ask,  the answers only to be found at the Treasury, the Bank, BERR, the FSA or the IMF?  It’s obvious that blinking banks are protectively reluctant to break rank for fear of competitive disadvantage – but are we not all in this together? 

What about all those other regulators and industry groups ?  Do they not also need, or want, or should be required, to adapt their free-market pre-recessionary positions to make a contribution towards faster recovery?   

Are there not wider lessons to be learned, not least about global interdependencies, from the collective awakening that’s only recently dawned upon toxic debt collectors?   To what extent can UK sector regulators carry on as if the rest of the world doesn’t matter? 

Scratch the surface and you can find plenty of examples of credit-crunch excuses for not doing the right thing. Retrenching on emission reductions is probably the most obvious.  But are there not also opportunities to wake up to new ideas – to release new innovative energies that in so-called normal times would be constrained by incumbent attitudes? 

What is the transport sector’s response?  Do we see a chance for a refocus on investment in advanced signalling systems to increase capacity of the rail network more effectively than building more tracks? 

Do we see any leadership in the tourism sector to gear up for a bumper 2009 on account of the plummeting pound? 

Has the Further Education sector yet grasped the need to focus employers on language training and multi-lingual web-site design in expectation of an export-led recovery ?  

Who is thinking through the productivity and innovation issues that will be needed to rescale to a more-proportionate public sector ?   

Are we betting on a resurgence of high-tech manufacturing to replace the unlamented loss of those ‘bank on the blink’ financial ‘services’ ?

What priorities should the telecoms sector now give to infrastructure improvements that would force open a much more competitive market and support the need for local economic growth and societal developments? 

And whilst we are thinking about telecoms – why should we stick to defending the national narrow-based interest of phone companies when it is business users that suffer most from international roaming rip-offs? 

Is the energy sector rethinking its generating capacity plans and aligning those with our neighbours?  France may have more nuclear capacity but we have vastly greater potential for offshore wave energy.  

More questions than answers, and the obvious snag with all these infrastructural notions is that they are not a quick fix.  The best bet for UK recovery seems to be in export growth as we and other countries come out of a recession that has made sterling relatively competitive.   

Surely we need now to plan ahead to ensure that our infrastructure position is enabled to provide the productivity and innovation boost needed to support a more confident and outward-looking economy.