But don't get me wrong, I am not defending current Macro. It has been extremely cool&good that everyone, including economists, now believes that the top-of-the-

But don't get me wrong, I am not defending current Macro. It has been extremely cool&good that everyone, including economists, now believes that the top-of-the-line models are basically garbage and economists are idiots. It means that people actually doing econ now are rather humble about what they do, and still have to be extremely technical and smart. Indeed, if you bring in a new theory that works, you'll probably be famous very quickly. The bar is pretty high though, your model gotta be inferential and parameters causally identified, while still fitting the data well. Nevertheless, my macroeconomist buddies got _really_ excited about doing "that machine learning" pretty much years before other fields were even talking about it (until they found out they basically use the same models already), because everyone is looking for the next big idea all the time. It's exactly the sort of old-style economists who can explain everything with their always-correct theories and basic math and then claim deference by everyone, who don't really have a place anymore - except writing articles for certain business newspapers, that is. Anyway econ sucks, continue please.