Economics lacked any professional code of ethics or enforcement body

Evidence

Of course, there existed no equivalent of the Justice Department or the Securities and Exchange Commission to actually police the economists, just as there was no phalanx of gumshoes and DAs to do the hard investigative work; and thus it dawned upon some that (unlike medicine, and even sociology) there was not even a professional code of ethics to which bona fide economists were enjoined to subscribe. … Furthermore, some of the self-appointed cops (and not a few of the political protagonists) turned out to be card-carrying economists themselves. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 445

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘quis custodiet’ framing echoes the theme from The Social Control of Impersonal Trust about guardians of trust themselves being trustees.