Economists rule the world

That's the heading of an article by Eytan Avriel on the Haaretz website today.

I found the article remarkable for a couple of reasons.

In the first instance, Avriel posits some sort of community of economists who are in agreement with an hegemonic world-view that favors the status quo in the existing global order.

One need look no further than Paul Krugman's writing in that erstwhile bastion of status quo-ery, the New York Times, to see that such is not the case.

Defenders of the status quo tend to have more access to media bully-pulpits because, after all, the owners of big media have a vested interest in exactly that. Krugman with his Nobel medal is permitted the Times platform because his name lends prestige to the paper. While Krugman is an exception, that exceptionality also destroys Avriel's argument.

Also of interest was a passing reference to the Milken Institute. What was interesting about it was that apparently sufficient time has passed that it is now permissible to refer to Milken without the once-obligatory aside to his 98 count indictiment on fraud and racketeering charges in 1989. The dirty laundry has been well aired-out and cleansed with the passage of time.

Milken was one of the architects of the "Rumpelstiltsken economy" that overtook America in the last quarter of the 20th century. Why get rich building a company from the ground up when you can get richer faster by buying one that someone else spent a lifetime building up and then gutting it?

All the straw-spinners in all the hedge funds today owe a huge debt to Michael Milken.

Finally, after a decidedly downbeat lament over our prospects under the further rule of the dismal scientists, Avriel concludes that we don't actually have to let them rule.

There's a faint shadow still lingering of something called "democracy", and while it has been everywhere co-opted and corrupted, Avriel sees hope in the broad-based social protest movements that have swept much of the world over the past year.

On that point I couldn't agree more.

Occupy democracy!