[huxley]

Krugman's comment was a criticism and analysis of the Fed policy in 2002, not advice.

The Fed helped inflate the Dotcom bubble to the extent that when it collapsed, the only path it left itself to get the economy back to levels approaching that bubble, would be to inflate a new housing bubble.

He wasn't saying they should do it, he was saying that Greenspan and the Fed had backed itself into a policy corner and they only way they'd get the economy to the previous "irrationally exuberant" levels would be to repeat the bubble process.

It's not a bad idea to read primary sources before passing judgment. Krugman makes mistakes but you shouldn't take whatever insta-opinion is published on a blog as definitive proof of the bankruptcy of economics.

[LekkoscPiwa]

Economics isn't bankrupt. Economics is just very ideological. Like Political Science. Or religiion. Or philosophy.

My point is that there shouldn't be Nobel Prize in Economics for that reason. It's as much of a real science as psychology is. If you can't have all serious folks doing that science come to a table and agree that 2+2 is 4, you will end up with mistakes that will cost you Nobel Prize Prestige.

Walesa, a guy who got Peace Nobel Prize in 1980s for figthing communism in Eastern Europe wanted to give it back, once he heard Obama is getting it for "encouragement".

If people like Krugman don't stop making clowns of themselves you may and up with a situation where the Nobel Prize as a whole isn't kept in such a great regard anymore.

So for me, the claim that was made to get rid of Nobel Prize in Economics makes as much sense as not giving it for encouragement or sciences like psychology or political science. They are usually just extension of opinions masquarading as sciences. Not real sciences where you can proof something. Sorry for pooping on your party.

And yeah, having bunch of these clowns at the FED who think that their job is to go from a bubble to another bubble which one bigger than the previous one - how this isn't mad? You call this science? I beg to differ.... it's cheap politics masquarading as serious science. Laughable.

[dragonwriter]

> Economics is just very ideological.

Economics is a science. The subject matter of economics may often touch on issues on which people have ideological investment, but the same is true of all of the social sciences, physics (especially cosmology), biology (a whole host of subfields, but particularly those that have something to say about the presence or absence of innate differences between races, genders, or other subgroups of humanity, or that touch on origins of life and its present diversity), and, well, lots of areas of science.

And, of course -- largely orthogonally to any scientific contribution in the field -- economists (as well as scientists in any field) may have ideological views that they advocate for, whether or not they touch on the subject matter of the field.

Neither of these are reasons to not have Nobel Prizes in particular fields.

[LekkoscPiwa]

> Economics is a science.

Alright, I can use your semantics. Espeically because calling economics science is what we all do.

But it still doesn't change the very valid point that Nobel Prize image may loose because of Economics Nobel Price.

The same way it wouldn't be good for them to have Nobel Prize in Psychology. Or Political Science.

Top experts in these - forgive me the quotes - "sciences" can't agree on even most basic and fundamental concepts in their "sciences".

You'll have keynsians who say you need to print in the crisis. And you'll have austrains claiming that's actually the worst thing you can do. One group calling other pseudo-science and the latter calling former marxist definitely doesn't help its image. Propagating this image to the Nobel Prize isn't not good for Novbel Prize. The claim is 100% valid in my book. I'm not surprised they don't want to have it. It hurts their business.

Going back to Krugman in one of his "brilliant" pieces he suggests World War 3 is needed to end the crisis. Of course with austrains claiming that this is even worse and will make the crisis worse.

For a person on a street this looks like a band of clowns arguing. It's not like Nobel Prize winners in Physics have arguments about value of number pi or there are some who think that Earth rotates the Sun and some other who believe (yep, science - believe, lol) the opposite is true. You see, all I'm saying is, that it is 100% understandable for some of the Nobel family to be disgusted with it and not wanting their Nobel Prize to suffer from that. What's so difficult about understanding that?

Expanding on that thought: just imagine we have year 1490 and we don't know any better. Let's say a Nobel Prize in Physics exists. Let's say that for whatever reason a scientist who believes that Sun goes around the Earth gets it. While guys who say that Earth goes around Sun are ridiculed and laughed at. Maybe Nobel Family members not being experts in economics just - rightly - are afraid that we'll get better, much better in Economics in the future and then the Nobel Prize image will suffer. Because they are giving it out currently to some clowns, not even knowing about it. That's their perspective and I think I agree with it. Wouldn't you?