Dave Cohen on economists

Economists — The high priests of progress (original)
Dave Cohen, Decline of the Empire
This essay is a follow-up to Monday's The Law Of Civilization And Decay, which you should be familiar with before proceeding. Economist James K. Galbraith posed the question Who Are These Economists, Anyway? Based on the historical investigations of Christopher Lasch, my answer was that they are the High Priests of Progress.

Mr. Cohen mentions one writer whose work is published over at Counterpunch:

Economics became ahistorical. The triumph of Progress was so all-encompassing that there was no longer any need to study past financial crises or past anything else, including the rise & fall of civilizations. The Tech & Housing bubbles best illustrate this blindness. Economists were so sure that nothing could go wrong that they not only ignored the historical lessons of past financial crises that John Kenneth Galbraith laid out in A Short History Of Financial Euphoria, but they also denied that the bubbles were happening, period. Our High Priests would wonder aloud if it was even possible to identify bubbles, or simply praised the apparent "growth" you get as bubbles inflate.

In banishing history & philosophy, economists became mere technicians (sometimes called technocrats) with a very limited perspective regarding how civilizations (or Empires) progress over time. The most famous economic engineers in the Modern Age are former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and current chairman Ben Bernanke, who has laid out detailed policy arguments in speeches on fighting deflation (helicopter money drops) or the Great Moderation (~1983-2007). It was this period of ever-growing "prosperity"—interrupted only occasionally by mild, brief recessions—that fooled economists into thinking that Progress was inevitable, irreversible, and endless. Ironically, it was during this very period that the events occurred that signify & define the American Empire's decline today.

James Galbraith, who is Kenneth's son and author of The Predator State, acknowledges the great failure of economists to understand what was going on in the period leading up to the crash. He then chooses to focus on those economists who got it right, which is to say, those economists (e.g. Dean Baker, who called the bubbles) whose insights would have led to better policy decisions, thus allowing us to avoid the meltdown. You will notice immediately that Galbraith is arguing inside the box, meaning that Progress is still inevitable, irreversible and endless had only the right policy choices been made, and the right regulatory structures implemented. For Galbraith, since it is never too late to change course, all we need to do now is to revert to Good Policies to set things right, to get us back on the Progress ladder.

To take up Galbraith's faith, you must also believe that all the corruption in Congress (e.g. midnight deregulation), the grotesque wealth inequality in America, our broken, dysfunctional politics, the predatory behavior of all-powerful Finance, the existence of Too-Big-To-Fail, the disconnect between Imperial agendas and what is best for Main Street, the existence of what I call the Money World, the exploding deficits, our unmanageable future entitlements debt, etc, etc. can all be placed at the feet of Bad Policy over the last 30 years. And not just misguided policy, but policy that was also well-intended and sincere whether it emanated from the Left or the Right—policy untainted by the corruption great political power creates. That's a lot to swallow.

Mr. Cohen's criticisms of James Galbraith is applicable to both Dean Baker and Mike Whitney?