Tim Harford: I do not regard my own confusion as an indictment of modern macroeconomics, but I am struck by the soul-searching that has gripped the profession in the face of the economic crisis. The worry is not so much that macroeconomists did not forecast the problem – bad forecasts are more a sign of a complex world than intellectual bankruptcy – but that macroeconomics seems unable to provide answers. Sometimes it cannot even ask the right questions.
Your daily dose of Simpsons: Smithers: That's quite a nice model, sir. Burns: Model?
Malcolm Gladwell: Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty, and the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much.
Do Sweat The Big Stuff | 
