In de media verschijnen het afgelopen jaar columns van personen die al of niet als Econoom afgestudeerd zijn aan een serieus te nemen Universiteit, die op basis soms van weggezonken kennis en onvolmaakte analyse tot de meest verstrekkende conclusies komen over de oorzaken van de huidige onrust op de financiele markten. Vandaag weer een column van meneer Moore in de Wallstreet Journal. Wat je noemt een rasechte pure classic economist die de economische politiek van de huidige Amerikaanse regering riduculiseert. Op foute gronden m.i. In 2009 schreef Paul Krugman, nobelprijswinnaar van 2008, een zeer behartenswaardig artikel over de verwarring onder de economen over de schuldencisis en de daaropvolgende recessie. Dit onder de titel „ How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?" Het laatste gedeelte hieronder en voor het volledige artikel klik hier. ---------------------------------------------------So here's what I think economists have to do. First, they have to face up to the inconvenient reality that financial markets fall far short of perfection, that they are subject to extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds. Second, they have to admit — and this will be very hard for the people who giggled and whispered over Keynes — that Keynesian economics remains the best framework we have for making sense of recessions and depressions. Third, they'll have to do their best to incorporate the realities of finance into macroeconomics. Many economists will find these changes deeply disturbing. It will be a long time, if ever, before the new, more realistic approaches to finance and macroeconomics offer the same kind of clarity, completeness and sheer beauty that characterizes the full neoclassical approach. To some economists that will be a reason to cling to neoclassicism, despite its utter failure to make sense of the greatest economic crisis in three generations. This seems, however, like a good time to recall the words of H. L. Mencken: "There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong."When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly. The vision that emerges as the profession rethinks its foundations may not be all that clear; it certainly won't be neat; but we can hope that it will have the virtue of being at least partly right.

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