Yeah, DeLong has always wanted to hang the last Sulzberger with the entrails of the last Graham. This is not an attractive streak in him, as I live in a town where our newspaper is actually falling apart, and no one is served well from it.

In any case, the Cossacks who were still with the Swedes when the Swedes surrendered were regarded as traitors and were impaled. That’s what happens to Cossacks who don’t work for the Czar. Cossacks who work for the Czar have their reasons.

Lest there be any confusion, this is not to suggest that the U of Chicago economists, U of Minnesota economists, be impaled.

Dan: “I would think the key would be at whatever point the views put forward by Chicago’s economists stopped being useful to people with power and money who are greedy for more.

So, you know.”

I won’t hold my breath, that’s for sure.

Sort of the way that political science and international relations reacted to missing the collapse of communism by refraining from further comment about politics and international relations?

I would think the key would be at whatever point the views put forward by Chicago’s economists stopped being useful to people with power and money who are greedy for more.

So, you know.

No the key will be when Chicago is no longer considered to be a top-ten (or top 100) department, with it’s grads only suitable for teaching at odd community college or diploma mill…

“No, I suspect that the reaction of the profession to the observable fact that it has fucked up in almighty style on the major and important questions of its subject, will be to follow Steven Levitt and withdraw into a cosy little tunnel of twatty books about teachers and dating. This is the only viable self-defence strategy for the economistic ego.”

No, because for those on the right the f*ck up will be unfalsifiable – after all, there was Evul Govmint involved, which ruined the v*rginity of the Invisible Hand. Except for being able to back this up with rigorous analysis, this is what’s happening right now, on blog after dead-ender blog.

Remember that right-wing economics survived the Great Depression and New Deal. The Chicago School might have come to prominance and dominance in the stagflation era, but it was an already-formed belief system well before then, back in the triumphant heyday of Keynesianism. Therefore, I expect most of the professors involved will simply go on as they have, with the only addition of much denfensivness and unjustified scorn. And why not? They don’t suffer from being wrong re: the real world, only from being wrong re: their profession’s standards.

As I see it, the obvious source of change is grad students. The key will be when a newly-minted Ph.D. from Chicago is considered to be a priori a notch below a newly-minted Ph.D. from another top 10 department.

In addition, I’d bet that a far larger proportion of the work force falls under the classification of ‘contractors’, and would not be counted as unemployed in the same way as if they were employees.

No, I suspect that the reaction of the profession to the observable fact that it has fucked up in almighty style on the major and important questions of its subject, will be to follow Steven Levitt and withdraw into a cosy little tunnel of twatty books about teachers and dating. This is the only viable self-defence strategy for the economistic ego.

Taking my cue from Genesis 18, this is actually rather more generous than Jehovah, since his bottom line appears to have been not one righteous man, but ten.

IMHO, the problem of allegedly honest people happily collaborating with the extremely dishonest people is at least half of the problem. This was also a habit of Brad’s of which he has not totally freed himself; his policy was very close to ‘all enemies on the left, no enemies on the right’. When it comes to the point where a single person is used as an argument that an institution is not 100% corrupt, it is indeed time to raze that institution to the ground, and sow the ruins with salt. Note that Norm Ornstein might be used in the same way at AEI.
In the case of U Chic, I’ve heard that 10% of the undergrads are econ majors, which suggests that, in a better world, U Chic itself would get a line of armored bulldozers plowing through it.

In the case of a place like U Chic or AEI, it’s not like we’re destroying a town because there might have been some terrorists in it; we’d be destroying a terrorist base camp and major training facility, and the people getting hit are either terrorists or those who figured that living there and doing business there was profitable.

Daniel :
“It does make you wonder whether economics can ever be the same again – after this experience, can the Berkeley/Princeton/Obama economists ever really go back to a state of polite terms with the people who have done this to them?”

Probably they will; for example note that Summers is technically an Obama economist, but at the core of our current ‘unleash the hounds of financial deregulation’ troubles. Also, see comment #13 – the dominance of right-wing economists can be very self-sustaining, because those who buck them will in general suffer careerwise. Krugman is more the exception which proves the rule, and he had to be a 10th level EconStud and have the NYT screw up and hire an honest man to do what he’s done. And it still took colossal dishonesty on the part of the right-wing to make him see the light.

What might happen is that the next generation of econmics grad students see what’s happened, and refuse to personally accept the Chicago School position. And they’ll have to spend twenty years bucking that system.