…especially public ones and especially ones given over and over again, I’m keeping my eye on this: British economists sent an apology to Queen Elizabeth because they didn’t see the economic crisis coming.
The letter was a response to the queen’s asking for an explanation of the credit crunch last November; se wanted to know why no one saw that coming.
The three-page letter included this:
“In summary, Your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”
I am trying to imagine a group of American economists doing the same thing, and I simply can’t. Imagine it, I mean.
