The Measured Version of My Screaming

John Quiggin finally makes explicit What Everyone Knows: that the clusterfuck that has been made of Macroeconomics is due largely to an attempt to leverage (insufficiently robust) Microeconomic Theory:

the search for a macroeconomic theory founded on (roughly) neoclassical micro, which has been the main direction of macro research for 40 years or so, was a wrong turning, forcing us to retrace our steps and look for another route.

Think Lucas and Prescott as Mirror-Moses, leading gullible Macroites further and further from the Promised Land, themselves evermore unable to ask for directions.* Couldn’t have said it better, or with so few expletives, myself. But then, that’s why he has a book contract.

Read the Whole Thing.

UPDATE:*Or, probably more accurately, think the years Christ spends between “I have thirst” and realizing that his long, happy peaceful life was The Last Temptation, as per the movie and novel of that name.