Redemption is a very human process through which those who have erred renew their social value through acknowledgment. reflection and revealed learning. It is a process through which people of recognized value to society who have failed in their social responsibility regain their ability to contribute. It confirms that error does not discredit all that one knows and understands, provided error is seen and understood.

For at least twenty years, the economics profession enjoyed a kind of triumphalistic hegemony in policy that permitted no dissenters. While it was disturbing and frustrating to those with practical knowledge, it was hard to fight. The profession expressed such certainty and such superiority as to make disagreement intolerable. It was a time of a kind of intellectual hegemony.

We can now see that its knowledge claims were essentially ideological, based on beliefs that defined what was correct thinking and what was not. Markets were efficient, Keynesian economics wrong, monetary rules and inflation targets the only possible macro economic goals, regulation useless and unnecessary, welfare social madness, and government action sure to fail due to rational expectations. Dissenters from these views were not only wrong, but apostates. They must be and were systematically discredited and pushed to the margins.

I well remember moderate views like mine on these matters being subject to condescending disdain by the very economists who work in the institution I am now part of. While I never subscribed to the classical left views, this was not enough. Moderate views were taken as a failure of intellectual rigour. A commitment to markets, deregulation, and smaller government were not just truth but character tests.

Many have paid the price for the monopoly these views gained over policy. The recent economic disaster need not have occurred had the views of economists been more moderate, reasonable and balanced, and had they not abandoned a once vigorous commitment to observation and science. For many of us, the question is whether there is any real reflection about and review of these views by those in the profession.

So far there is little evidence of regret or even error on the part of the profession. The smartest and the brightest have begun to try to understand why government action was necessary and is now working, but most are largely defensive and in denial, stuck in their old ways of thinking. That is regrettable. While it is perhaps not surprising that the process of redemption and renewal is beyond the reach of most people who so over-reached themselves, it is surprising that few in this profession have even ventured to begin the process. It suggests that this once honourable profession is incapable of confronting its own failures. Without that, it is almost sure to never regain its once dominant position in public life. Redemption is beyond its reach. Which is not uncharacteristic of those who succumb to ideology. Sad but true.