Quick, when I say the word economist, what comes to mind? Fearless truth teller, sage wise man?

Someone whose deep understanding of the complex web of billions upon billions of daily interactions in the sphere of human

activity enables them to predict the outcome of those interactions years in advance with

near certainty?

Or do you think of Paul Krugman? Be honest now, it's Krugman, isn't it?

That's not just embarrassing, it's perplexing.

Economics is a science, right?

It must follow some ironclad laws of the physical universe then,

mustn't it? But somehow we always end up asking the same question. Why are economists always wrong?

This is the corporate report.

So what's going on here?

How can it be that a profession that likes to call itself a science, even a dismal science,

and whose practitioners are entrusted with steering the economies of entire nations can be so

consistently, horribly, wrong.

Case in point, Paul Krugman.

If we discovered that space aliens were playing to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat

and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary

place to that.

This slump would be over in 18 months and then if we discovered whoops we made a mistake there aren't actually any space.

We need to Orson Well what you're saying.

No that's a there was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien

threat in order to achieve world peace.

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