Perhaps we will see greater acceptance of cooperative decision making. Down with autocracy! Viva democracy!

The notion that the blogosphere consists of myriad independent thinkers all subjecting their subjects to independent review is ludicrous. Blogs primarily (not exclusively, but primarily) merely regurgitate and amplify the talking points of the day. It's the behavior of a swarm of bees, who all watch a single intrepid adventurer dance, and then follow them wherever they might lead.

I'm a big fan of blogs and the conversations that they provoke, but comparing blogs - or even drawing parallels - to peer reviewed science, to me, is quite ludicrous.

And calling economics science, well, that's a rant for another day.

"Take the case of the bailout. From my amateur perspective, it was fascinating to watch economists of all political persuasions, left, right, center and libertarian, argue about the best way to address the financial crisis. Over time, and through much argument, a rough consensus emerged that recapitalizing the banks was ultimately the most likely approach to work. And sure enough, that's what ended up happening. Now, there is no clear paper trail linking the econoblogosphere to Hank Paulson's change of heart, but it would be foolish to argue that his or Ben Bernanke's economic pronouncements did not receive withering peer review."

Let me get this straight. So your version of events is that Hank Paulson, former (and maybe future) CEO of Goldman Sachs, was initially resistant to a massive corporate welfare grab, one directed at his discretion to his own former company ($10 billion to Goldman Sachs), then had a "change of heart" after a democratic, grassroots internet debate came to the "consensus" that this serious move towards real, literal fascism (i.e. the merger of state and corporate interests) was needed?

On what planet did this occur, again? Because the way I remember it is: Americans woke up one day to find that bank after bank was imploding due to bad executive decisions; that this situation, according to Bernanke, Paulson, and their Congressional and White House buddies, constituted an "urgent national crisis" that needed "immediate attention," and that Bush, Paulson, Bernanke, and their Democratic stooges in Congress then proposed the most massive corporate welfare bill in American history--a blatant theft of taxpayer dollars and a complete slap in the face to the American public.

The bailout was rammed through with NO real debate whatsoever (all of, what, a WEEK after it was first mentioned in public?) as some sort of legislative emergency against the vocal wishes of a majority of American citizens--ESPECIALLY libertarians and those other fringe free-market nuts.

Seriously, Mr. Leonard, what on earth are you talking about?

what is lacking is the political will to keep the rich and would-be rich from gaming the mugs.

when the nation is run by a small distinct group, let's call it an 'oligarchy', the benefit of the oligarchy and their supporters and sycophants comes ahead of the interests of the majority on the outside.

economics is not chess, or high energy physics, it's the financial aspect of the struggle for power. rational analysis begins with the knowledge that ethics melts quickly when not supported by inspection and the real prospect of severe retribution. greenspan is a fool, or is a disingenuous liar when he says he never imagined people would take advantage of deregulation.

america is a nation of fools for bearing this government of rotten pollies and bureaucrats.

There is a difference between peer review in the scientific community and peer review in the pseudo-scientific field of economics. In the former, peer review has actual consequences for the theory being reviewed. In the latter, it has none. Ben Bernanke, like Alan Greenspan and all other Fed chiefs before him, has been allowed to act with total autonomy and total impunity. Henry Paulson's initial proposal is, in essence, what was written into law by the Congress. Their crackpot economic beliefs (I will not insult theoretical scientists by calling these notions "theories"—no, they are beliefs) are now sucking us dry.

Actions that have no effective results may as well not exist, so I ask: what "peer review"?

What we needed was for him to be shown the door years ago. Greenspan is a tool, a water-carrier for the landed gentry and nothing more. This has been documented repeatedly, even here on the pages of Salon. He receives such wondrous praise from the masters he served.

@ al loomis, spot on and succinct. I'll be quoting you for the benefit of others.

I love the irony that Greenspan's pronouncements on the market would have been better had they only been subjected to the rigors of the academic market ...

Your conclusion is flawed because it assumes that there is a real peer review process within the economics academic community. That is simply not the case.

Economics is not a science, because it has yet to escape the claws of the "school of thought" meme. They consider themselves neo-Keynesians, Monetarists, etc.... They tend to rarely if ever mix, and they rarely peer review anything outside their own "school of thought". When they communicate, it tends to quickly devolve to catty ad-hominem attacks, rather than substantive discussions of the merits or weaknesses of their models.

The worst aspect of Economics today is its intellectual conservatism (lower-case c): when a model is shown to be weak or even contrafactual, there is no incentive within the community to reject or modify it to answer the critique. The best recent illustration of this is the survival within the Monetarist school of Laffer's "curve". This "model", drawn by Laffer on a napkin according to the famous story, has been invalidated by clear data from the CBO. But what's far more important is that it has NEVER been actually formulated by Laffer in any way approaching a testable hypothesis, making it useless as a scientific model. Yet it is still taught in most right-leaning Economics department as if it was Gospel Truth.

Economics needs to join the 21st century. It's impact on the life of the nation and the world is far too great to allow this "science" to continue festering in mid-18th century academic compartmentalization.