When it comes to predicting the future, or the correctness of their opinions about virtually anything else, economists fall just behind weathermen in the spectrum of accuracy and relevance. This was confirmed most recently just yesterday, when we showed the "The Funniest Quotes From BofA As It Throws In The Towel On Its "Above-Consensus" GDP Forecast [4]." Furthermore, due to the non-falsifiability of perpetually erroneous economic theories and assumptions, economics is neither an art nor a science (captured best in "The First Economist [5]" cartoon), but painful, if well-paid, voodoo: "painful" for all those whose lives are ruined as one after another economic theory shatters and leaves the world a worse place than it was before; "well-paid" only for the tenured economist in question.
Confirming just this is the following table extracted from yet another typical economic study titled "Do the Best Scholars and Economists Attract the Highest Speaking Fees [6]?" (just what is a "best economist" - the one whose "theory" results in the greatest GDP-boosting world war?)
While we urge nobody to read the actual study, what is stunning, especially in light of recent revelations that the most clueless economist of them all, Ben Bernanke, now commands a fee of $250,000 per speech (and just happens to be "off the chart"), is just how much these constantly wrong weathermen are paid to spread their particular dose of voodoo.
So, without further ado, prepare to be dumbfounded.
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