| Kasz216 said: Truth is, at the end of the day Monetarists and Keynesians are social scientists that like to pretend they are hard scientists. Economic modeling really doesn't work, and the equations are largely meaningless... the differences is, unlike the dog... most economists are willing to keep running into that fence, because it's better off doing that then admitting that statistical models don't work like the "real" sciences. We'd have better economic predictions if we actually backed off the stats and integrated more qualitative methods. |
And in the middle of this discussion that has been going on several days, I run across this article that has Baron's warning about student loans, and postulating if there is a bubble that will happen in the student loans market: http://reason.com/archives/2011/08/05/moodys-sounds-the-alarm-on-stu
It says there won't be a bubble, because there aren't speculators coming in. Can a market have a bubble without speculators and merely government overinflating of costs by driving up demand that shouldn't be driven up? It connects back to the discussion on housing in this thread, but since it connects to hiring, have to wonder what the future will hold regarding the job market and economic growth, if we see a collapse in colleges. The knee-jerk reaction to employment issues is to shove everyone into college. Make it more affordable is the buzzword. What I saw in the video on that page looks very much like the GW Bush speech on making housing more affordable to everyone, except it is Obama talking about college.
In regards to the economist comment, it is likely there is way too much hubris among people in economics and their individuals attempting to apply their theories to the real world, back to what I said about quantitative analysis work, producing formulas that they believe can never fail, and then overextending themselves. In the case, it is more important to produce a believable lie, for the stake of stability, than it is to own up to what really is and can be. I say all this watching CNBC today, and seeing the stock market drop over 600 points and the VIX indicator shoot up, and no one knowing what is coming next. For the financial markets, better a myth lending to security than not knowing.
