“Most economists, it seems, believe strongly in their own superior intelligence and take themselves far too seriously. In his open letter of 22 July 2001 to Joseph Stiglitz, Kenneth Rogoff identified this problem. “One of my favourite stories from that era is a lunch with you and our former colleague, Carl Shapiro, at which the two of you started discussing whether Paul Volcker merited your vote for a tenured appointment at Princeton. At one point, you turned to me and said, “Ken, you used to work for Volcker at the Fed. Tell me, is he really smart ?” I responded something to the effect of, “Well, he was arguably the greatest Federal Reserve Chairman of the twentieth century.” To which you replied, “But is he smart like us ?”
- Satyajit Das on Naked Capitalism.
Satyajit Das in this highly entertaining review of credit crunch literature also quotes US humorist PJ O’Rourke, who described economics as an entire scientific discipline of not knowing what you’re talking about. “One can only quibble with the word ‘scientific’.” Just how did the practice of economics end up in such a dead end ?
One plausible answer arises out
of Eric Beinhocker’s outstanding ‘The Origin of Wealth’ (Random House, 2007),
which sets out to ask the questions: What is wealth ? How is it created ? How
can we create more of it ? In short, blame Léon Walras. In what must surely be
the obligatory preparation for becoming an economist, Walras started out by
being rejected, twice, from the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique due
to poor mathematical skills. He then failed as an engineer, then failed
as a novelist. He then spent several years struggling as a newspaper writer and
a bank employee. The fact that he was French may not have been
an altogether promising attribute either.
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