Edward Fullbrook, the editor of the Real World Economics Review that created the Dynamite Prize in Economics and the Revere Award, has just sent out the message reproduced below.
Voting for the Revere Award for Economics for the three economists who first and most clearly anticipated and gave public warning of the Global Financial Collapse and whose work is most likely to prevent another GFC in the future, will close in a few days. Please vote. So far the number of people voting has been disappointing. To stimulate interest, the poll has now been set to reveal to you the current results once you have cast your votes. You can vote for three. To view a timeline and to vote now, click here . It takes only seconds. By voting you reward the deserving.
The Dynamite Prize attracted over 7,500 voters–a substantial cohort. I have no idea how many votes have been cast for the Revere Award–and I can’t check since I’m one of the nominees–but obviously it’s a lot less than that. This isn’t surprising–after something as devastating as the GFC, the desire to throw stones at the guilty is palpable; there’s less passion in rewarding those who did see it coming.
The objective of both prizes was to point out how badly economics has gone off course, when theories that actively contributed to a catastrophe like the GFC can win their developers a “Nobel Prize”. This intellectual travesty occurred while neoclassical economists could bask in the false glory of a booming economy that was in reality a Ponzi Scheme in its boom phase. Ironically, now that government rescues have “ended” the GFC, neoclassical economists are sinking back into their old complacency again–even though their theories that failed to predict the GFC also predicted that government policy could not affect the economy in any beneficial way.
Shake them up again, even if only a bit. Cast a vote for anyone in the Revere Award.
Postscript
I’m back from the Walk from Kosciuszko, and have to attend to some personal responsibilities–specifically, filing my tax return for 2009–before I can become active again on the blog. Once that’s out of the way (and the deadline is Friday April 30th) I’ll post a retrospective on The Walk.
