Your reply about why the economists failed to predict the 2008 crash is an example of the problem the article is about. The economists didn't need a lot of tech

Your reply about why the economists failed to predict the 2008 crash is an example of the problem the article is about. The economists didn't need a lot of technical information. They just needed to know that for a couple of hundred years banks had been careful about who they gave mortgages to because if they defaulted they would take a loss, but then they started bundling and selling them, so they felt safe to make it far too easy to get a mortgage. And that the bond rating agencies had a severe conflict of interest because they were paid by the people selling the bonds. And that credit default swaps are unregulated insurance. Except for the cds part, all that was common knowledge. A little common sense would tell you this was a recipe for disaster, and in fact this was pointed out by people like Dean Baker at the time. The question is why the great majority of economists didn't take 30 seconds to look at the facts and agree, and the answer seems to be they simply lack common sense.