Book review: Grand Pursuit

Authored by Sylvia Nasar in 2011 (ISBN 978-0-68487-298-8).  Ms. Nasar also authored "A Beautiful Mind", the movie version of which I quite enjoyed.


Nasar weaves personal histories of famous or influential economists with their economic theories.  These economists are not all that interesting, certainly not as interesting as the movie.  I found the theories mildly interesting and wonder still at humankind's inability to get it right:  poverty is everywhere, found mixed in close quarters with overflowing abundance.  What causes this?  Why, with all of our computer power, were we not able to predict the current economic slowdown?  Why are we not able to devise a plan to bring us out, quickly.  Or, is the problem really politics rather than economics?  In other words, are the solutions well understood by some group of economists but their advice and wisdom is twisted by interest groups?


Economist Paul Samuelson was quoted as saying:  "Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!"  He was criticizing some economist or economists who were pointing at this indicator or that as being useful.  He knew the correct indicators were and are ....  In my opinion, no one seems to know.  Sure, there are some economists who make predictions that come true, and may even do so a few times in a row, but then?  I think they are just lucky, as the person who predicts a coin will flip to heads five times in a row and it does:  this will happen naturally 3% of the time.  My own joke is as follows:  "economists made five major predictions for the past year, nine of which were incorrect".