Take my economist - please

There are many web pages devoted to making fun of economists but this one will do. I liked it because it was text only - no annoying pop ups or hook up links or similar internet diversionary tactics. In other words, the website owners have failed to monetise it. Losers.

I selected this joke for its upper quartile performance but also for the local content:

When Albert Einstein died, he met three New Zealanders in the queue outside the Pearly Gates. To pass the time, he asked what were their IQs. The first replied 190. "Wonderful," exclaimed Einstein. "We can discuss the contribution made by Ernest Rutherford to atomic physics and my theory of general relativity". The second answered 150. "Good," said Einstein. "I look forward to discussing the role of New Zealand's nuclear-free legislation in the quest for world peace". The third New Zealander mumbled 50. Einstein paused, and then asked, "So what is your forecast for the budget deficit next year?"

Funny. But seriously isn't it natural to seek such revenge on those whose job it is to predict the loss of your job? When you watch the po-faced economists talking about 'creative destruction' or read their dire predictions for future employment levels, don't you fantasise about them queuing up at WINZ?

If you were going to judge economists on their predictive performance over the last couple of years most of them would have to resign en masse. Ross Gittins, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, points out that the global financial meltdown "has revealed major weaknesses in conventional economics".

"Economists will need to face up to these if their discipline is to recover its reputation and relevance," Gittins says.

Even the current superstar economist, Nobel laurete Paul Krugman, has penned  an apology for the profession he headlines for, slamming it for its "blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy". Titled 'How did economists get it so wrong?', Krugman concluded economists will "have to learn to live with messiness" if anyone is going to take them seriously again as prophets.

"When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly. The vision that emerges as the profession rethinks its foundations may not be all that clear; it certainly won't be neat; but we can hope that it will have the virtue of being at least partly right," Krugman says in his humourless punchline.

 


David Chaplin