[OPE] The dismal science...

Martin Wolf comments in a blog:

This, in short, is a time for humility. Why did we mostly get "it" so sensationally wrong? How did something that looks increasingly like the precursor of a slump creep up on almost all of us this year? It is a pretty good question. It is a pretty embarrassing one, too. (...) These, then, are disturbing times for economists. But they are not all bad. They are also times of the highest intellectual excitement. Economists have been given the material for research programmes stretching decades into the future! Tens of thousands of PhDs, not to mention a few Nobel prizes, are surely waiting to be hatched! http://blogs.ft.com/wolfforum/2008/11/a-time-for-humility/#more-272

At least he is honest... and he is surely correct that the credit crisis is bound to revolutionise economic thought, or at least change it significantly, though this is probably small comfort and rather "academic" to all those millions of people whose lives are financially ruined. Marx & Engels already commented that every crisis is supposed to be the last one, and each new crisis typically catches capitalist society by surprise. The task then is to place the whole thing in historical perspective.

I would have liked to prepare a contribution to the controversy myself but alas, because of the hassles I had I couldn't find the time and resources to work up my ideas into a good story. I must now get on with other things, and therefore I will have to settle matters at a future date, when I am better positioned to do it.

J.

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Received on Fri Nov 28 13:13:14 2008