john maddente | midwestern clarity

W ith a title like, "Are Economists Really That Smart" I had to read Bill Flax's piece in this month's issue of Forbes magazine , especially after digesting his first sentence, "Remember when Joe Biden admonished us to keep spending or else we'd go bankrupt?" Biden's statement reminded me of something Nancy Pelosi uttered before enactment of the unpopular Obamacare legislation affecting 1/6th of our national economy.  Of course, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are not trained economists, nor am I, but these people are running the country.  This clip is only five seconds... My timing to read the aforementioned Forbes piece was good since I'd just finished fighting my way through Nassim Taleb's best selling book, The Black Swan .  (I say "fighting" because several technical aspects are beyond me). In their own ways, Messrs. Flax and Taleb fillet and roast the cadre of economists, public p...