economists

Why So Little Self-Recrimination Among Economists?

Yves Smith adds some excellent commentary in her piece, Why So Little Self-Recrimination Among Economists?, which brings to our attention Jeff Madrick's report on The Daily Beast on the just-concluded annual conference of the American Economics Association, How the Entire Economics Profession Failed. Madrick writes, 

At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists that just finished. . . .

Economists Rethink Free Trade

Business week has a new article, Economists Rethink Free Trade

I find this amusing for for what I have read, the good economists for a long time have said current trade policy is not in the national interests and often is glorified labor arbitrage agreements.

From Alan S. Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve and member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton Administration, to Dartmouth's Matthew J. Slaughter, an international economist who served on President George W. Bush's CEA, many in the profession are reevaluating the impact of globalization. They have studied the growth of low-wage work abroad and seen how high-speed telecommunications make it possible to handle more jobs offshore. Now they fear these factors are more menacing than they first thought