Why do we still put our faith in economists?

[nomadd]

Do we put our faith in Economists? That's news to me.

Me too.

The only faith I have in Bankers and Economists is that the companies who employ them pay my invoice each month. And for the last 3 years, they've been doing just that. No faith, but then again, no complaints.

Nomadd

[Pogle]

I dont

[Doggy Styles]

Many bankers knew what was going on, and where it would lead. They just kept quiet and obfuscated for reasons of self-interest.

(And they could, because no-one was properly supervising them any more...)

[Bagpuss]

It's pretty hard to predict the new ways that people can behave stupidly.

[Gonzo]

Do we put our faith in Economists? That's news to me.

I've said it before on here but what the hell, economists can do a great job of explaining why the past worked out as it did but they are useless for predicting the future.

Years ago, I was taking the train to London and bumped into someone that I was at school with and we had a similar conversation because I had resigned from the Economics part of my degree in protest over the amount of complete bulltulip I was being taught.

He had taken his first degree in Economics and was at that time doing his Masters.

He said to me

If you want to know how the economy is going to behave and you have the choice of asking a Witch Doctor or an Economist, ask the Witch Doctor.

There is a miniscule possibility that the Witch Doctor might be right.

The Economist will be wrong.

[BrilloPad]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...ing-sense.html

The last few lines are great :-

Rather, in the confusion of economic collapse, and as the economists did themselves, we have lost trust in our common sense and are seeking refuge in apparent certainty. There is a deep-seated human instinct to seek out oracles, and in a world that is less religious than it once was, in an internet age characterised by a relentless blizzard of information, noise and data, we have become more reliant than ever before on "experts": anyone with qualifications or distinctions which make them worthy of attention.

Yet, if there is one thing this crisis ought to have taught us, it is that those apparently "in the know", and in power, often have just as little clue about what is going on as the rest of us. The public looked to the politicians; the politicians looked to the economists; the economists looked to their mathematical models. The upshot was the financial crisis.

Of course, an alternative explanation for our continued faith in economists could be that we have yet to feel the real pain of the recession. By lumping so much debt on to governments' balance sheets, we have merely put the full effects of the crisis off for a bit. Perhaps, then, when countries start defaulting, our faith in the "experts" will be well and truly shattered. I think I prefer the first explanation.