Do you have an economic background?

Scientist by training (Physics/Maths) but a programmer by profession.

Masters in physics and a degree in applied mathematics and physics.

Dunno if that particularly helps understand economics, but I've a fairly healthy interest in it.

Needing an economics degree in order to understand the economic crisis is a bit like needing a sports science degree to understand why Ireland had such a dreadful world cup.

I know economists who have no real appreciation for the fleeting 'live economy', much in the same way that a mathematician specialising in optimization modeling may have little enthusiasm for, say, devising bus timetables.

We must separate economic theory (the art of trying to understand the economy and its components) from our temporary understanding of this fleeting 'live economy' we live with. Understanding the latter mainly requires an understanding of politics and an appreciation for absurd human behaviour. The requirement to know much about economic science is not a particularly gruelling one - a basic grasp will suffice. Nobody needs an economics degree to understand this - much of which is never taught at University anyway.

Permabear wrote: »

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I have to question the suggestion that economists 'lacking vision' is a bad thing.

Economics as a pure science must never lower itself to visions, nor to passing down visionary diktats to bankers, politicians or individuals. Economists ought only be concerned only with understanding the economy and its components. No objective scientist argues for any more than what is demonstrably true. His progress is slow and steady; painstaking, perhaps. He presents his conclusions and allows others to interpret them as they wish.

Suggesting that economists become philosophers is not unlike proposing that nuclear physicists ought to be pro or anti nuclear energy. It misses the point entirely. We should pursue knowledge for its own sake; not to, as Eliot says, 'squeeze the universe in a ball, to roll it toward an overwhelming question."

It is not the economist's role to predict or to preach, merely to understand.