“As we weigh our economic prospects, we need to recall the lessons of the Great Inflation. Its continuing significance is that it was a self-inflicted wound: something we did to ourselves with the bests of intentions and on the most impeccable of advice. Its intellectual godfathers were without exception men of impressive intelligence. They were credentialed by some of the nation’s outstanding universities: Yale, MIT, Harvard, Princeton. But their high intellectual standing did not make their ideas any less impractical or distinctive. Scholars can have tunnel vision constricted by their own political or personal agenda. Like politicians, they can also yearn for the power and celebrity of the public arena. Even if their intentions are pure, their ideas may be mistaken. Academic pedigree alone is no guarantor of useful knowledge and wisdom. Skepticism ought to qualify and restrain our reformist impulses.”
From Robert Samuelson in The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath.
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