“Our God Is Money”: Economics Isn’t a Dismal Science—It’s an Ersatz Religion

“Are you an Austrian?” I was asked recently, in the polite tones reserved for asking if I were, say, Jewish or Muslim or Christian. 
  

An object of veneration.

I’d been asked the question while discussing macro-economic policy in the United States— 
  
—actually, “discussing” doesn’t quite capture what I’d been doing:
  
I’d been lambasting the Neo-Keynesian drivel of spend!-spend!-spend!, which I deplore—“They’re like drunk sailors with the national credit-card—trawling for good blow and cheap whores in a Tijuana back alley!”—
  
—while at the same time ridiculing the Monetarists’ obsession with money supply—“Money-supply fetishists are just like foot fetishists—only twice as creepy, and only half as reasonable!”—
  
—all the while insisting that in this Global Depression, savings had to be the priority—austerity the only policy prescription that made any kind of sense. 
  
“Are you an Austrian?” came the question. 
  
“I'm an agnostic,” I answered flippantly—but then instantly realized that my answer went to the heart of the problem with economics. 
  

It’s no great insight to say that economics—the so-called “dismal science”—has had a dismal track-record in terms of predicting macro-economic events over the last forty-odd years. 
  
And as for the last couple of years? Sheesh—a monkey throwing darts would have done a better job of predicting how the macro-economic picture would play out. 

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