Goldman Sachs is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, it's bad for America.

The article was over-the-top in its conspiracy theory, but Tiabbi was certainly directionally correct.

His follow-up after Goldman's earnings is much more in line with the actual facts: http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/16/on-goldmans-gigan...

Economics is a bogus subject?

What other subjects don't you approve of? Psychology? Philosophy? History?

And: as the page you linked to properly points out, the fact that Alfred Nobel didn't leave money in his will for an Economics prize didn't stop others from funding a prize in Nobel's memory, which is awarded by the same people who award the other Nobel Prizes, following the rules set down in Nobel's will. If the prize is good enough for the Nobel Foundation, it's good enough for me.

There's also no Nobel Prize for Mathematics. If mathematics is also a bogus subject, then it'd be worth knowing that there is no Nobel Prize for Economics.

You sir, are incorrect, there are lots of discoveries in economics. They are just not empirical they are derived from logic and the study of human action. When studying a complex dynamical system its is impossible to make predictions, but there are fundamental laws that can guide human action and understanding. For instance, when printing money inflation occurs, by definition inflation is a term to describe increase in the amount of money. Now all things being equal when there is an increase in the amount of money prices will in general go up, more dollars chasing the same number of goods.

If you're interested in solid well grounded economics, I highly encourage you to look at Carl Menger, Frédéric Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. There are of course many more, but they are giants.

Knowledge and information transmission and dispersal is a key economic domain. The price system is perhaps the most powerful information system ever invented since it allows people all over the world who have never met and to coordinate their behavior in mutual beneficial ways. A quick easy read is Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (http://mises.org/econcalc.asp) is a clear example of how economic thought can be applied to predict outcomes of various systems, but notice it doesn't say in 10 years X will happen.