Trash-Talking Economists

By Richard Eskow | June 6, 2013


Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Journalist A. J. Liebling called boxing “the sweet science.” To read the Internet lately you’d think they got the two professions mixed up.

Economics is becoming a battle royale, a free-for-all. It’s a melee where everybody with a fist, glove or folding chair can jump out of the audience and into the ring. It doesn’t matter how much the ref blows his whistle. There will be blood. If economists had entourages, bullets would be flying.