I think it's funny that this piece, while making fun of those idiot economists for being surprised at the inevitable and obvious, goes on to say "the price of a barrel of oil hit an astonishing $110".

Here are three simple things to keep in mind in order to prevent further astonishment:

1. Energy is *literally* life - there is no resource more important.

2. Most of our energy comes from oil because it is far and away the most energy dense, easily produced, and abundant source of energy on the planet.

3. The global production of oil is plateauing.

Most people underestimate the time and effort it will take to transition to another energy source (presumably sun-based: wind, solar, wave, whatever). This transition period will be shorter and easier if we can stop being astonished by the inevitable and obvious... Or it can be long, hard, and full of tears.

Economists have become the social scientific equivalent of Super String theorists in Physics. They have no proof of what they are talking about, they can't seem to ever test their theories or offer up an experiment that would falsify their claims, but they do have some awesome, wonderful mathematical gobbledy-gook that only other initiates can fathom. Both groups' mathematical abstractions are presented as facts, and anyone who wants a big-time job in the field better knee down and worship the established wisdom; in the case of Economics, Rational Choice, Profit Maximization, and Free Markets. I'm no enemy of science, but if your claims can't be proven or disproven, and your predictions don't mirror the data, you had better not lay claim to any knowledge better than a hunch. At least Physicists still have the Standard Model, which works. Economists have a lot of pretension mathematical claptrap, half-baked ideas, and crude ideological bias.

who owns a Domino's pizza franchise in a very tony area. Houses on a minimum of 5 acres, prices range from 1.2 million up to 3.5 million. Life was pretty good - - until last year, when he had a huge spike in bounced checks. The first time, the customer was apologetic. The second time, not very pleasant. The third time - well...!

He implemented a system that ID'd customers who had bounced multiple checks, so that he could request a credit card when the order was place. Bad move. It seems that rich people - or people who want to appear to be rich - don't like being dealt with in a manner befitting deadbeats in training. My friend's business is down almost 40% from 18 months ago, but at least he has stopped giving away pizzas to thieves in big fancy houses. He has had to let some of his employees go. He's hoping it doesn't get worse.

Lots of consumers have run out of rabbits to pull out of their hats. Or, like myself, we have cut back to the bone because of reduced income.

... they just have different titles.

Stock analysts who work for brokerages 'analyzed' dot-com stocks with no assets, or sub-prime mortgage securities with no transparency, or incredibly high claims of profit, in the range of fantasy (Enron), and came away satisfied. Buy, usually, was their unending recommendation.

Of course, who did they work for? The same people selling the stuff they analyzed.

Economists that work for banks or the government have a built-in bias to support the views of their employers. They are not 'objective.' Nor are the statistics they look at, like 'unemployment' or 'inflation' or the one's they don't look at, like the off-loaded costs of environmental pollution and degradation. Jim Hightower's "Bob Jones" index is totally invisible to them. Even those 'economists' that work for foundations usually do the bidding of those who pay the bills. Whose independent? Doug Henwood, and ... ?

Most American economists are salesmen for the bourgeois free market economy, and will be selling the 'happy news' long after the apple-sellers appear on the street. Because, of course, they won't be selling the apples.

OK everyone, let's calm down. First, Andrew Leonard got it wrong. Economists did expect spending to drop, just not by 6% (by 2%, as the statement clearly states). There is big difference between what Mr. Leonard said and what the statement said. Review if you are unclear.

Second, the idea that economists have no idea what they're talking about, are just making things up, or have no basis in reality is simply preposterous. When economists formulate expectations about what will happen in financial markets in the future, in output markets in the future, or in foreign exchange markets in the future, they are doing just that ... attempting to predict the future. Does anyone here know how that works? Does anyone here have a better-functioning crystal ball?

The way that it works is that economists build giant and extremely complicated mathematical models of economic performance and use current information to formulate estimates of future behavior. The estimates are derived from our current understanding of certain relationships - for example, that a decline in interest rates will cause an increase in spending, holding all else constant. As new data on the economy becomes available, it is fed into the model, and predictions are the result.

There are problems with this of course. First, even the most recent data describes past behavior, not current or future behavior. Second, those fundamental relationships can change in magnitude over time. Third, no one can predict with certainty what will happen in the future. And that seems to be what most people blame economists for, that they do not have perfect foresight.

So really, this is a straw issue. Many of us are concerned about the economy, our jobs, gas prices, wages, and so on. When we hear news about the economy, especially unexpectedly bad news, we blame the messenger. Economists don't tell the economy what to do, they simply tell the rest of us what it is doing.

And yes, I am an economist.

Rich f__kers aren't paying for their pizzas!? I find that way too far out to believe. These are economically savvy people. You put that pizza on the credit card, when the credit card is full you pull a refi and consolidate. One of the nicest homes in my neighborhood (middle to lower middle class, SoCa semirural) went into foreclosure, the owners bailed, and last night a bill collector called us to see if we knew anything about their whereabouts. hmmm.