The brightest lights in economics now lean Left

A LOT of people see economics as a "conservative science" that makes up unrealistic theories in order to push a free-market agenda. I don't know if that was ever true - maybe in the 1970s? - but if so, those days are long gone.

At the latest American Economic Association (AEA) meeting - this big annual economist convention ended on Monday - some people turned out to protest against what they claimed was too much mathematical formalism in economics. In an act of supreme irony, their main target was Carmen Reinhart, a Harvard economist whose most famous work is a book about the history of financial crises - a famous example of modern economics that isn't mathematical.

Why did the protesters go after her? Because she is in favour of cutting government debt. What the protesters want has nothing to do with methodology - they want economics to lean more to the left.