Are economists part of the problem

It may seem like economists are always just getting it wrong like when almost all of them failed to foresee the current economic collapse that began in 2007-8.  And it may seem like the "prescriptions" for fixing things always seem to make things worse for everyone save the banksters and their interests.

Well, there are reasons for that.  Turns out many "name" economists have massive conflicts of interests.  Far from being disinterested scientists in search of the facts, they are being paid serious money to come up with policy prescriptions that favor their clients--usually at the expense of the rest of us.

So some folks who still remember what scientific research is supposed to be about made a suggestion at the American Economic Association conference in Denver that economists should reveal their major funders when publishing their "findings." Not surprisingly, this suggestion didn't get very far.




And as for the question of why economists all seem to represent the interests of the moneychangers instead of the Producers or the evnironment, turns out there is a pretty simple explanation for that too.

Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession

First Posted: 09- 7-09 02:14 PM | Updated: 10-23-09 05:12 AM

Ryan Grim

ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.

"The Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong."

One critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its relationships with the field's gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll -- and the rest have been in the past. more