The brazen Psy-Fi Blog challenges the usefulness of economists:
Now, leaving aside the question of whether we want our professional economists to be entertaining, this opens up the question of whether untrained commentators can provide any useful insight into matters financial.
The answer, speaking as an economically untrained scribbler, is almost certainly no: the vast majority of financial blogging opinion on any matter of prediction is worthless and that which isn't is indistinguishable from the rest. Unfortunately this is a conclusion of limited usefulness, because most trained economists can't actually offer any useful predictions either and following Athreya
's prescription would almost certain deny us any opportunity for useful advances in the world of macroeconomics.