That sentence seems to be fairly ignorant. For one thing, it's kind of like saying "if scientists really understood the weather, we wouldn't have tornados ever

That sentence seems to be fairly ignorant. For one thing, it's kind of like saying "if scientists really understood the weather, we wouldn't have tornados every few years". Or even better, "if we really understood climate change, we'd stop it". There's a big difference between understanding something and being able to do something about it. Another thing, it's missing the nuance that financial crises could be handled better or worse, and it seems to me like it's getting better (e.g. compare the great depression to the great recession). People like to dump on things they don't have much familiarity with, and software engineers and the HN crowd in general seems to think everything besides software is all noise full of uneducated people. (Not saying you specifically are an outsider to economics or a software engineer, but that is the general trend.)