Random: America Article "Misleading Indicators: How U.S. Economists Missed the Great Recession"

Economists, for the most part, failed to foresee the current financial and economic crisis—the worst since the 1930s. Now they cannot reach a consensus on how to resolve it. A few—such as Nouriel Roubini and Robert Schiller—saw what was coming but were ignored. James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas, said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” When Judge Richard Posner, a leading theorist of law and economics, was asked why the warnings about a looming crisis were ignored rather than investigated, he responded, “Many economists and political leaders are heavily invested in a free market ideology which teaches that markets are robust and self-regulating.“ A reasonable question might be: Why listen to economists?

– from the introduction to the article by Charles K. Wilber, Emeritus Professor of Economics and fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.