>This is where academic theory comes in. The finance sector damages the economy because it does not function as well as the models contend.

This is rather an understatement. Most neoclassical models (the dominant strain of economics, despite its demonstrated failure to predict crises) basically assume that the financial sector doesn't exist.

This is why most economists' reaction was "nobody could see it coming" and their policy recommendation response to the crisis was "even more of the same, please" (deregulation, desupervision and de-facto decriminalization).

Then they wonder why people don't respect them any more.

"Hope", as such, does not come from the school of behavioral economics. That was getting trendy even before the crisis hit and did not help at all. Personally, I can think of only one economist who is making models that accurately model the behavior of financial institutions in the macro-economy - Steve Keen, who is resurrecting and extending upon Hyman Minsky's instability hypothesis.