More on blogging economists

Andrew Leonard in http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/07/03/net_economists/index.html:
"The econo-blogosphere is more than a collegial coffee-room discussion. It's closer to an internationally-distributed graduate seminar, in which the lucky students get to watch -- and participate in -- a round-robin debate featuring scores of professors duking it out. It is also an early-warning system for new academic papers of note and an instant provider of context and analysis for each new blip of economic data. It is, to put it most simply, an education.

Does that mean it has an impact on policy? That's where it gets tricky. Politics, especially as practiced in the United States, appears to care little for the consensus opinion of economists, especially when that runs counter to polling data and focus group results. But maybe it's just too early in the history of the Internet to make a definitive call. We need more data."
More links before I loose them. Jared Bernstein Responds in The Coffee House to "Why are Economists’ Predictions So Often Wrong?" http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jul/02/predicting_with_a_handicap_why_are_economists_predictions_so_often_wrong
An excerpt "There are other things economists do well. Our empirical methods, in the right hands, can be highly informative and useful. But, like Yogi said, prediction is hard, especially when it comes to the future. When you’re carrying all this baggage along with you, it’s even harder."
More links at http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-on-old-joke-about-why-economists.html
But economics is more than weather prediction and economists and bankers seem to be getting better at preventing big disasters. See the views of Brad De long and Mark Thoma in http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/brad-delong-hat.html
Another interesting post on morality and economics http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/morality-and-ec.html goes back to Adam Smith. P.J.O'Rourke says in http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/401ngehx.asp "It's a mistake to read The Wealth of Nations as a justification of amoral greed. Wealth was Smith's further attempt to make life better. In Moral Sentiments he wrote, "To love our neighbor as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity." But note the simile that Christ used and Smith cited. The Theory of Moral Sentiments was about the neighbor. The Wealth of Nations was about the other half of the equation: us.

It is assumed, apparently at the highest level of moral arbitration, that we should care about ourselves. And logically we need to. In Moral Sentiments Smith insisted, paraphrasing Zeno, that each of us "is first and principally recommended to his own care." A broke, naked, starving self is of no use to anyone in the neighborhood. In Wealth Smith insisted that in order to take care of ourselves we must be free to do so. The Theory of Moral Sentiments showed us how the imagination can make us care about other people. The Wealth of Nations showed us how the imagination can make us dinner and a pair of pants."
Apparently 'the invisible hand' already appears in "The Theory of Moral sentiments":
"[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species."