“I don’t care how smart you are, you can’t keep track of all this s**t.”

Bill Frezza wrote in 2008:

• Macroeconomics is the practice of looking for correlations between poorly defined and badly collected aggregates over cherry picked time intervals meticulously ignoring inconvenient factors in order to justify preconceived notions. What makes this different from astrology?

• I confess that the only Hayek book I made it through without my eyes glazing over was “The Fatal Conceit.” It’s a slim volume written later in life, apparently after Hayek discovered humbleness, an unusual discovery for an economist. His thesis is simple – “I don’t care how smart you are, you can’t keep track of all this s**t.”

• Economists who believe they can centrally plan a national economy and optimize – what, some flaky set of poorly defined aggregates? – are deluded. Politicians who promote these delusions to arrogate power to themselves are knaves. And voters who buy this fantasy are dupes. Yet Hayek be damned, here we go again.