This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics goes to two Americans, Thomas Sargent (NYU) and Christopher Sims (Princeton). Officially the award is for “their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.”
. . . . it’s a bit odd for the economics profession right now to be celebrating two scientists for their work in helping policymakers steer the macroeconomy. It would be a bit like awarding Jonas Salk a Nobel Prize in the midst of history’s second-worst polio epidemic.
. . . .
Given that you wanted to approach macroeconomics in the way the mainstream has done it over the past few decades, then yes Sargent and Sims made seminal contributions and should be congratulated for their important work. For example, there is a poll for visitors at the official site, asking, “Did you know that Sargent and Sims’s work is used by policymakers worldwide?”
Yet hold on a second. We ironically seem to be in the midst of one of the causation-correlation traps that I just explained above. Just about everyone is celebrating the work of Sargent and Sims, in effect saying, “Thank goodness you gave policymakers such guidance, especially when they need it now in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s! We can only imagine how awful the world economy would be today, were it not for your seminal papers.”
Aspects of the Pathology of Money
$29.00 $25.00
Yet things might well be just the opposite. The “data” is just as consistent with the opposite conclusion, namely that Sargent and Sims steered the macroeconomics profession along a trajectory that led policymakers to do things that blew up the global financial system, such that we are currently worried about the collapse of an entire continent and its currency. 
(Read more)
See also:
How to silence a Nobel Prize winning economist: Ask him about the economy.
Yes, these are the guys that government bureaucrats listen to.
The silence is deafening…
Addendum:
Jerry Kramer recalled Vince’s slogan,”You don’t do things right once in a while. You do them right all the time.” ‘This is the right way to do it. Which way are you going to do it?’ Said Kramer, “Of all the lessons I learned from Lombardi, from all his sermons on commitment and integrity and the work ethic, that one hit home the hardest. I’ve found in business that only fifteen or twenty percent of the people do things right all the time. The other eighty or eight-five percent are taking short cuts, looking for the easy way, either stealing from others or cheating themselves. I’ve got an edge, because whenever I’m tempted to screw off, to cut corners, I hear that raspy voice saying, ‘This is the right way to do it. Which way are you going to do it, mister?'”
Ed K