Question by billke: Do you agree that the profession of “Economist” and all related professions have been thoroughly discredited?
No one predicted and prevented this financial crisis. If anything, the prevailing view of Economists was to add fuel to the flames due to their insistance on globalization, securitization, and idiotic interest rate policies.

But the main point is… why the fck didn’t anyone predict this before it happened. WHy are all these economists with PhD’s running bloviating their theories, yet did absolutely nothing to predict or prevent this. They are all bull-shyt artists.

Best answer:

Answer by SDD
On the contrary. Many, many economists* and other observers predicted this sort of thing based on the way Congress encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy government subsidized high risk loans. The Senate even considered a bill in 2005 to block more of this sort of lending, but Democrats blocked it.

* To name one — Bob Schiller of Yale. You’ll recall that he was also the one that warned about the “irrational exuberance” of the stock market in the late 90s. Few responded then either.

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