The crisis and the blogosphere have opened mainstream economics up to new attack

Heterodox economics: Marginal revolutionaries | The Economist
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The bygone and the marginalised always look strange. But would it not also be strange to imagine that, in 30 or 50 years, economic historians will look back on the current crisis and say that mainstream macroeconomics offered the best analysis and prescriptions that could have been conceived? If they agree that it did not, then there seems a chance that they will think perspectives outside the mainstream might have helped.

Decades ago macroeconomics resembled an “intellectual witch’s brew”, according to Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. It contained “many ingredients, some of them exotic—many insights, but also a great deal of confusion”. Things then became more rigorous and refined: disagreements remained, but within set limits. Now, on the blogs, the economic conversation boils and bubbles again. That ferment is surely spreading into the academy—and in time some new quintessence will be brought forth, perhaps from materials now considered base.