http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...ing-sense.html
The last few lines are great :-
Rather, in the confusion of economic collapse, and as the economists did themselves, we have lost trust in our common sense and are seeking refuge in apparent certainty. There is a deep-seated human instinct to seek out oracles, and in a world that is less religious than it once was, in an internet age characterised by a relentless blizzard of information, noise and data, we have become more reliant than ever before on "experts": anyone with qualifications or distinctions which make them worthy of attention.
Yet, if there is one thing this crisis ought to have taught us, it is that those apparently "in the know", and in power, often have just as little clue about what is going on as the rest of us. The public looked to the politicians; the politicians looked to the economists; the economists looked to their mathematical models. The upshot was the financial crisis.
Of course, an alternative explanation for our continued faith in economists could be that we have yet to feel the real pain of the recession. By lumping so much debt on to governments' balance sheets, we have merely put the full effects of the crisis off for a bit. Perhaps, then, when countries start defaulting, our faith in the "experts" will be well and truly shattered. I think I prefer the first explanation.
The last few lines are great :-
Rather, in the confusion of economic collapse, and as the economists did themselves, we have lost trust in our common sense and are seeking refuge in apparent certainty. There is a deep-seated human instinct to seek out oracles, and in a world that is less religious than it once was, in an internet age characterised by a relentless blizzard of information, noise and data, we have become more reliant than ever before on "experts": anyone with qualifications or distinctions which make them worthy of attention.
Yet, if there is one thing this crisis ought to have taught us, it is that those apparently "in the know", and in power, often have just as little clue about what is going on as the rest of us. The public looked to the politicians; the politicians looked to the economists; the economists looked to their mathematical models. The upshot was the financial crisis.
Of course, an alternative explanation for our continued faith in economists could be that we have yet to feel the real pain of the recession. By lumping so much debt on to governments' balance sheets, we have merely put the full effects of the crisis off for a bit. Perhaps, then, when countries start defaulting, our faith in the "experts" will be well and truly shattered. I think I prefer the first explanation.
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