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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

That doesn’t seem relevant to the topic at hand.

It's probably tangential,and anyone can get unlucky, but it does seem kind of fair to judge economic policy advisors by the performance of assets they control. We might get better predictions if they had to put their money where their mouth is, and everyone could see their scorecard.

Your argument is that a good understanding of economics will inevitably lead to good gains in your investments, and a lack of performance in your investments means that you lack a good understand of economics.

That seems kind of shaky to me.

The two topics are tangentially related at best, though. Economic policy deals with much more than simply the stock market. Furthermore, economists typically don't specialize in investment management.

It still shows what to think about the economic experts in banks, politics and schools like Harvard.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=40313

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=39889

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=39788

It kind of does. Why should we take his opinion seriously after the debacle at Harvard?

Same reason people take the Federal Reserve seriously, even after failing to see literally every single recession on their watch.

A very human bias is to believe and follow those in positions of authority, despite long and verifiable records of abject failure and incompetence.

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