Messiah of the Market

The abysmal forecasting record of the dismal science comes as no surprise to one of its severest in-house critics:

Friedrich A. von Hayek, 85, the Austrian-born scholar who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 and is now en joying a revival of influence. In Hayek's opinion, economists can observe and describe general patterns that emerge in the marketplace, but cannot make precise predictions about the course of an economy. He told TIME Correspondent Lawrence Malkin, "Not even a computer can keep track of the daily information that is dispersed among hundreds and thousands of people about their real intentions to...

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