Paul Krugman has a blog, and today he takes note of a phenomenon that is, unfortunately, not confined to economic prognostication:
Dean Baker is mad at Robert Rubin for suggesting that “few, if any” people saw the financial meltdown coming.
I’d say that there are two levels to this. First, a lot of people — including Dean, me, Calculated Risk, and others — saw that there was a huge housing bubble. It remains amazing that so many alleged experts failed to see the obvious.
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In the larger sense, though, Dean is right. Even now, those who saw the risks are somewhat marginalized in public discussion, while those who airily dismissed all the warnings are still treated as men of good judgment.
This is an echo of the way in which those who led us into the Iraq war have been treated. Bill Kristol, as just one for instance, who has been wrong about all things Iraq, is still considered an expert, and has been rewarded with a column at the times. Those who predicted the disaster that has happened have been systematically ignored.
It is unclear why this happened, though judging by the Cassandra myth, it is not a new phenomenon. Those who were right, and are still being ignored, do have something in common. They were all saying things that ran counter to the prevailing media narrative, and in the case, at least, of folks like Dean Baker, counter to the interests of the corporate types who control the media. They were, in other words, saying things that the media didn’t want to hear, and didn’t want you to hear. They’ve now been proven right, but that makes no difference because they are still saying things that the media would rather you not hear.
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