Bias Economists

The Economics profession has taken a lot of criticism lately for its response to the recession.

The Bernanke Files prides itself on being a pragmatic, unbias analyzer of economic policy. The Bernanke Files believes that most of the well founded criticism of economics probably stems from the political bias and ideological rants that many pundits spew everyday.

For example, today's Paul Krugman Blog exemplifies the profession's ignorant biases. Krugman criticizes Bush for going into debt to the tune 0f $500B. Then every comment is a total acceptance of Krugman's statement, its like his audience is... liberal! So of course he is speaking down to his audience.

But, has humanity come to such mindless, thoughtless following? The Bernanke Files thinks not! The debt had to come from somewhere. The two questions one must ask to be fair are: How much did we pay for the money? (Answer: a measley 3-4%) And is the benefit we recieve from the debt greater than (3-4%+addt'l unseen costs)? Keep in mind that if we did not go into debt, employment or wages (or a combo of both) would be considerably less than it is now.

While many of these questions are semi-rhetorical, it is interesting that Krugman does not even mention the cost/benefit analysis in his anti-Bush rhetoric. When the average reader crosses this, how could he become anything but skeptical at the economics profession?