April 29, 2010
Just about the whole economics profession missed the housing bubble that sank the U.S. economy. Fortunately for them, economics is not a profession where performance matters. The “experts” who completely missed the largest economic disaster in 70 years are still the sole source for the overwhelming majority of news stories on the crisis.
This is especially painful in coverage of the Greek and now larger euro crisis. Those of us who read Keynes (a group which should include all economists, but apparently excludes nearly all media “experts”) know that the problem is that the European Central Bank has to make more money available to its members to get through this crisis. While many governments hold superstitions about the benefits of rain dances and the causes of inflation, there is no basis for concern that printing money will cause inflation in the current economic situation.
The story that reporters should be writing that is that the superstitions of many European governments (with Germany topping the list) are needlessly inflicting pain on tens of millions of people across Europe. Ironically, these superstitions may ultimately have a severely negative effect on Germany’s economy as well.
Economists who are not clueless about this crisis could explain this situation to readers. It is unfortunate that most major media outlets have chosen to rely exlcusively on economists who are.
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