The Politics of EconomicsThe Politics of Economics – NYTimes.com.
Fantastic article on how snake-oil, con-men who portray themselves as “the authority” for everything under the sun without having even once looked at the actual data have manage to contort the public perception of the reality. I have said this a number of times in my classes, that despite the rhetoric in popular media, academicians in finance and economists–albeit imperfect and at time self-adulating–have warned us of just about every major bubble in last 20 years. (most famously is Professor Robert Shiller with his warnings of stock market irrational exuberance of 1990s and the real estate bubble of 2000s)
Even in the aftermath of 2008 global financial crisis, there have been great ideas that yet to be discovered. This includes MIT’s Professor Andrew Lo’s idea of an NTSB type organization for the financial system that in the aftermath of every major failure steps in and analyzes the evidence and publishes its findings so that the industry, the government and the public can make better decisions (see Andrew Lo’s congressional testimony).
