We have long argued that when it comes to the deplorable and insolvent state of modern “developed” societies, the fault lies as much at the bottom, as at the top: the bottom, in this case, being the economic establishment in both academia and practice that peddles a voodoo pseudoscience as a legitimate explanation for the unpredictable happenings in irrational world, meant to give people an illusory sense of control, and which works until it doesnt and fails spectacularly, at which point “the top”, or the central banks conceived to smooth reality when it does not conform to economist models and to facilitate wealth transfer from the poor to the rich of course, have to step in and fill gaping holes some $20+ trillion wide – see: 2008/2009 all the while, the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, by way of that invisible tax known as inflation continues. And while it has proven easy for the shamans of this voodoo class to fool the general population time and again use big words, speak loudly and with confidence, mock any opposing voices as not having a Ph.D. or a Nobel prize in economics… “act as if” in their infallibility and superiority or that they have even the faintest clue what it is they are talking about, the reverse has also turned out to be true. And as the case of one Mr. Baptista da Silva from Portugal has shown, there is nothing easier than for an economist to con other economists. Or, rather, one fraud to con a whole lot of other frauds.

From The Independent:

via The True Story Of How One Economist Fraud Conned Other Economist Frauds… And Everyone Else | Zero Hedge.