Quoting Bill Lear <[email protected]>:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:21:47 (-0400)
[email protected] writes:
Quoting Bill Lear <[email protected]>:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 09:37:39 (-0400)
[email protected] writes:
The reason why mainstream macroeconomists failed to predict the current
economic crisis, and continue to fail to understand and explain it, is
that their THEORIES ARE BAD. ...
I think this is nonsense. Plenty of economists used their plain
vanilla economics education to see a bubble forming and warned about
it. The problem is that most mainstream economists have a religious
devotion to neoliberal "free markets", which when translated to
English means "deregulation, public subsidies, union busting, the
invisible handshake, war, demonizing the poor, a preferential option
for the rich", etc.
Bill
Bill, don't you think that the lack of profit and debt in their
theories makes it next to impossible to understand crises in capitalism?
No, not at all. Theories, for responsible persons, are merely guides.
Those who choose to look the other way and lead the cheers for capital
are little better than propagandists. There is probably a good reason
"responsible" economists (irony quotes) ignore profit and debt: they
are perfectly aware of what conclusions would be inevitable if they
didn't.
Bill
Bill,
I think I understand better what you are saying, and I agree with you
in part. You seem to be saying that economists cannot understand
capitalism, not because they have a bad theory, but because they are
"bad people" (i.e. apologists for capital). And that bad theory is
itself an inevitable result of this apologetic intent. Perhaps so.
But I think bad theory also "seals the deal". Capitalist crises cannot
be understood without taking into consideration profit and debt. And
this would also apply to other mainstream economists who perhaps do not
have this apologetic intent.
Fred
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