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Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right.

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 must always be prepared for surprises: they find many in trying to find order in the universe of their study.

At the simplest level, economics can better show us the consequences of our actions. Less simple are cases in which we don't have the knowledge to predict the full consequences. Global warming and climate change are examples.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

Economists create their own worlds. We're like little gods with our artificial economics, wanting to see what happens.

Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives - common around the globe - that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom.

For economist the real world is often a special case.