Lars P. Syll — Why some economists lie

Keeper Samuelson quote on the noble lie.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Why some economists lie
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

See also

The pretense-of-knowledge syndrome​

J. D. Alt — A Comfortable Betrayal

It would be a shocking scandal if it came to light that the professions of medical science had, for decades, known about an easy to treat, underlying cause of cancer—but conspired to obfuscate and suppress the information to protect their participation in a medical industry raking in hundreds of billions a year to treat the disease. Professional standings, tenures, licenses would be in tatters. Lawsuits would abound. Outrage would march on every city hospital and medical college in the nation—would it not?

Such a betrayal is not humanly possible, right? Yet is it not the case that the professions of economics, journalism and politics are guilty of something very like this kind of betrayal?…

I would make the lede a story of betrayal by companies that knew that smoking caused cancer and denied and concealed it.

Isn't the noble lie of "experts about money creation a similar betrayal of public trust? Even Alan Greenspan admitted in congressional testimony that government is not limited in the amount of currency it can issue.

Ordinarily, this is suppressed however. Bernard Lietaer revealed it as a taboo.

Real Progressives
A Comfortable Betrayal

J. D. Alt

Crossposted at New Economic Perspectives

Lars P. Syll — Balanced budget — an old fashioned religion

"The" Samuelson quote on the noble lie (or pious fiction), if you don't already have it.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Balanced budget — an old fashioned religion
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Eric Schliesser — When the Financial Insiders tell you the accounting numbers are (ahhh) made out of thin air

Parsing Emilios Avgouleas and Charles Goodhart on the noble lie about finance and accounting.

Fourth, the reason why they think it's problematic that "published accounting valuations" are not stable is not because, say, all risk models are, thereby, based on epistemic mirages, but, rather, what needs to be prevented is that "the general public" starts the doubt the integrity of published valuations. That is to say, the public needs to stay in the dark about the truth about these numbers (because if the public loses confidence we risk more extensive crises). If keeping the shoddiness of accounting secret from the public serves the public's genuine good, one may call this a a species of Platonic noble lies. But other terms also spring to mind.

Digressions&Impressions
When the Financial Insiders tell you the accounting numbers are (ahhh) made out of thin air
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences