And so they went on a fishing expedition, studying the economic numbers themselves, as numbers, hoping to find a reliable set of relationships that could serve as a basis for understanding how an economy works. They couldn't. And they didn’t.

More than a half century has passed since then and economists are still crunching numbers trying to find a reliable set of relationships that could serve as a basis for understanding how an economy works. They can’t. And they won't.

The only difference between what they used to do and what they do now is that now they use high-speed computers to do it.

However, the problem is that their computer programs are based on assumptions that haven’t the slightest provable relationship to what actually happens in the real world.

Also their measurements and data are highly suspect.

And to top it off, economic conditions, situations, and circumstances are never the same twice.

Yet, despite these defects which render their findings utterly useless, economists today enjoy a status in society as respectable as that of the physicist and the physician, members of professions that make a real contribution to knowledge.

Pierre Gallois had it exactly right when he said: "If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no one dares criticize it." Well, almost no one.

Think about it.