I'm a physicist and one thing that I have learned throughout the crisis is that macroeconomics is plagued by an inflated importance of "schools of thought". Current mainstream macroeconomists disagree on ridiculously many things that a layman would expect to be basic facts. In that regard, it is a huge problem that what you are referencing to is "the majority of German economists".

"The majority of German economists" belong to only one school of thought which has not really proven to be "the" school of thought.

For me personally, the most striking thing about this crisis is that what may ultimately break our neck (our as in we the informed public, having our destiny in our hands) is the existence of language barriers. Believe it or not, but the intellectual frame of reference that is taken by the German press and many German economists (and of course all of the politicians) is very different from that of most of the rest of the world. Several things that should urgently be debated in Germany are not debated, since _everyone just knows_ that they are wrong.

For instance, have you ever read an argument for higher inflation from a German economist (not Munchau) in an important German newspaper? Why not? Why is the hyperinflation of Weimar mentioned every now and then but no one publicly gives thought to why there were (and are) many countries that manage to live with inflation higher than 2% (the long term italian rate was around 4-5% throughout the eighties and nineties)?

Why is there no discussions of historical occurences of deflation and the problems/catastrophes they caused?

But let us add something more useful:

How should a non-economist judge if a text written by an economist is trustworthy?

Exclusion criteria:

* Claiming things without citing historical examples or adequatly discussing historical counterexamples. Believe it or not, most things out there have happened before.

* Inability to understand the frame of reference/underlying assumptions of the people whose opinion is _opposite_ to yours. If you think that "they" are all idiots, then you have not understood them or the problem.

* Not having a model. By model I mean that assertions of the type "When X happens, then Y should follow and Z should be impossible." or such are made.

Tldr: At this point there is no reason to just trust economists, no matter how great their number.