Macroeconomists mobilized after 2008 to obscure the crisis’s threat to neoclassical microeconomics

Evidence

If there had been a sophisticated outside observer, they might have insisted that all the brouhaha about jettisoning the DSGE model was a weary sideshow, since the gnawing problem the economic orthodoxy was intent on avoiding was gauging to what extent the crisis had voided the legitimacy of neoclassical microeconomics. Legions of macroeconomists were mobilized into action by the crisis not to address its dire consequences, but instead to obscure this threatening conclusion through smoke, mirrors, and legerdemain. No one who wanted to maintain their position in academia would countenance the possibility that amputation of the DSGE would result in the patient bleeding to death. So instead they promoted endless expensive consultations over the health of the DSGE—and even Congress was snookered into the pointless game. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 799

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘thought collective’ theme the reader is tracking — how orthodox economists defended the DSGE model as institutional self-protection rather than scientific response. — connects to: Macroeconomic modelers responded to 2008 by swapping textbooks rather than questioning the orthodoxy — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 779; Macroeconomists offered almost no public defenses of DSGE after the 2008 crisis. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 793; The 2008 crisis was fundamentally a crisis of economic ideas — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 132 (+3 more)
• SEED: Angle: academic economics as a self-defending profession whose crisis response resembled a guild protecting its turf rather than a science responding to anomalies.

Broader Connections

• The crisis was contained to macroeconomics by orthodox economists’ own narrative #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 548
• The 2008 crisis was fundamentally a crisis of economic ideas #expands (0.82) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 132
• Orthodox macroeconomics masked crisis buildup and blocked repairs afterward #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 662
• After 2008 the neoliberal thought collective intensified capture of economics #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 975