Krugman On Economics

A major public article from Paul Krugman on how economists went astray.

NY Times: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

Its interesting. I have as you very well know virtually no training in economics whatsoever. It became very clear to me that various firms can practically control Wall Street. That the market is capable of being severely manipulated. That extremely intelligent people devise grand schemes for working around the loop holes of standard exchange, no matter how carefully laws are established. That personal scruples or the lack thereof can sink a nation. That oil is at the center of most economic activity throughout the world. The markets are based on the exchange of oil. That greed and the lust for the acquisition of not just a lot of wealth but all wealth is at the center of the quest for many of the world's elite. That you can't make a billion dollars without someone else losing a billion dollars and usually its millions of people losing smaller sums. That the world's most formidable military is primarily engaged in maintaining environments for multinationals to freely function in. That the media is controlled by corporations and their agenda is to further corporate interests, not to make you and I free.

Maybe I'll write my own economic truths, but what is interesting for me again, is that I have come to wonder exactly what role if any economists actually perform.

There are profound models of activity, theoretical and flawless, but then there is the way the real world conducts business. The recession has everything to do with most of the observations I have noted above and of course many more notions, and many more sophisticated notions. But think about it, what can an economist do about any of this.