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Economists: Yes, why should anyone believe them anymore?

Now, everyone recognises that economics isn't an exact science - but economists consistently cannot agree with one another, let alone get their prognosis and assessments right. So, with such a poor track record, why believe anything they say ?

It's a subject and question taken up by author Stephen Hill in a piece "Shorting Economists: The ‘Experts’ Keep Getting it Wrong" in The Nation:

"Based on such a miserable track record, I’m shorting economists and financial experts of all stripes. Most of them are wrong more than they are right. But that doesn’t prevent them from pontificating like an order of self-righteous priests. Considering how much damage they have caused, how many economic experts have lost their jobs or been otherwise defrocked? Indeed, many of the same people who caused the disaster—Fed chief Ben Bernanke, Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, the latter two being Clinton treasury secretaries who got deregulation done, then split for Harvard and Citigroup, respectively—are still calling the shots. Summers, of course, is President Obama’s top economic adviser. Their economic priesthood protects its own, no matter how offending they have been, relocating them to another university or think tank, another government job or talking-head show.


So when the authorities say “a recovery is under way” or “stimulus rather than deficit reduction” or “deficit reduction instead of stimulus,” remember: These are the same experts who are unsure of how to measure, who too often substitute ideology and partisanship for broken theory, and usually have been flat wrong in their assessments. It is critically important that we find better measuring sticks and employ saner values for assessing what a successful economy looks like. Until then, we are flying in uncharted territory, without compass or radar, surrounded by fog. Heaven help us."

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