Macro Micro Mumbles

Economics, is a field of study that does not require negotiation, nor invigorating debates or passion per se- at least pre subprime mortgage meltdown, credit crisis, and Lehman Brother’s demise, GM’s quasi bankruptcy and the uncovering of Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent activities, I bet Ben Bernanke never saw it coming when he became Chairman of the Fed, having to stand up to the economy as if it had committed murder in the first degree- it just needs intelligence and ability to understand fundamental theories and attempt to apply them in the real world. That seemed doable, I could easily learn a few theories, apply them in practice.

Boring. That is what my life became right after I committed four years to economics at UCLA. I remember sitting in my Economics department graduation in the summer of 2008, and thinking to myself, “Economists are such an anti social lot”. In all my classes every student procured an ‘every man for himself’ tactic to get an A in the class. There was nothing social about this social science. There was only one professor that actually kept the lectures near bearable, Prof. Swanson. Prof. Swanson is one of those cynical, sardonic and malevolent characters you love to hate. He was old fashioned in his style of teaching, using only his chalk to scribble down notes on the black board. My favorite class with him was History of Economic Theory, and truth be told, that was one of my favorite economics classes I ever enrolled in. I understood economics as a product of human thought, beyond graphs, charts and formulas. Economics was never a ‘scientific’ field of study until the latter part of the 20^th century, before then it was just part of life, an organic progression as humans accumulated wealth, and tore away the dark veil from the Medieval era. Theories in physics, astronomy and other sciences began to surface, and the enlightenment period encouraged common man to become an active member of society, rather than be a slave to a concentrated authority of theocracies and autocracies. And so too came a deeper understanding to what drives the ‘invisible hand’ as Adam Smith wrote in his acclaimed book, “Wealth of Nations”. Now all the thousands of words written on hundreds of pages can be reduced to graphs and calculus. I preferred the words; it deepened my understanding of economics as a subject that related to humans. Today it seems economics drives human action, whereas it was human thought that in essence created economics and founded all its theories. Humans, as ‘rational beings’, have been reduced to just a variable in the ultimate macro economic equation.