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I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.

Narrative drives most of economics. Everything seems to be part of a story, and how that story is told often leads to critical error.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at the end of the day, we don't know very much in economics.

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.

It's much easier for people to compare wages or identify bad employers or discuss bad labor practices in the Internet economy than it was in, say, a factory environment, where that stuff wasn't usually published or available.

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

I've felt for some time that economics needs to be taught differently by economists who actually have had experience making a payroll or investing on Wall Street. When economics is taught by pure academics, watch out.

I'm an economist, not a political scientist.