Nate Silver: Not Enough Liberal Economists on WSJ Panel

Nate Silver, who was the break-out political analyst of 2008, questions the validity of the findings from the latest consensus-report from the Wall Street Journal's board of economists. It turns out the "worst" forecast from the 55-member board's report projected "only" a 2 percent decline of GDP in 2009.

Silver is quick with a methodogical explanation for this "counterintuitive" finding:

One can find room to criticize the composition of the Journal's panel: it probably does not contain enough liberal economists, and almost certainly does not contain enough what you might call nontraditional economists -- behaviorists or mathematicians or people that think, quote-unquote, "outside the box". Nevertheless, this represents quite a large difference of opinion with the Intrade forecast.

No, who would have believed it? Not enough liberals in the economics professoriate? And worse! Not enough "quants" thinking "outside of the box"! Geez, what's wrong with the American academy? Where's Paul Krugman when you need him?!!

Well, I guess we can add one more example to my paper, "'Depression Fetishism' All the Rage."

Nate Silver's on board the 1930s Depression Economics Express! More cowbell (infrastructure)!