Neoclassical economics unscathed

[bigbadwolf]

Interesting article by Philip Mirowski on how mainstream economists have survived with their reputations untarnished:

Neoclassical economists, having worked hard to convince the world that everything was hunky-dory circa 2005, and concurrently having invented the rationales and the theories behind the financial time bombs that went off across the landscape, don’t seem to have suffered one whit for the subsequent sequence of events, a slow-motion train wreck that one might reasonably have expected would have rubbished the credibility of lesser mortals. Individually and collectively, they have only become more dominant in academia and in government. They are even tapped to usurp the position of democratically elected leaders in periods of crisis.

And also this excerpt:

The recruitment track in America worked like this: If you were lucky enough to write a few macrofinance papers in major journals that attract the attention of people that matter; and then garnish a plum political job like under-assistant-sub-secretary of the Treasury/Council of Advisors, touching the right political bases, then it just follows that you will in the fullness of time become absorbed into the corporate/financial sector in some reasonably lucrative capacity, all the while speaking out as an ‘independent’ academic voice for the public commonweal. This career trajectory has been a conveyor belt for some time now, at least back to 1970, when Paul Samuelson helped found the hedge fund Commodities Corporation. The issue is not the possible compromise of personal virtue of this or that individual in the face of tempting blandishments; it is rather that the proud pretence of ‘independent expertise’ has become thoroughly undermined by career co-optation within the current economics profession. This has been the bane of academic economics, but also, after the crisis, the vessel of its deliverance.