Prominent economist Lim Chong Yah dies, aged 91 straitstimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from straitstimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Today must borrow nothing of tomorrow. German proverb (Nuttall’s) An earlier column looked at some aspects of the American economic predicament and the role of economists who managed (mismanaged) US national finances up to September 2008 and another set of economists who supported President Barack Obama administration’s policies, which would cause the national debt to exceed US$13 trillion (RM44 trillion) before end-2009.Following the economic chaos, policy confusion and difficulty in digging out of the morass, the whole economics discipline had been tarred and feathered. Can political leaders and the general public depend on economists to manage the economy?To my mind, two main problems beset the economics profession. First, economists are overly ideology-biased. At one extreme, there are the rightwing-Chicago school free-market worshippers who want zero-economic regulation since market forces through the price mechanism will solve everything. Then there are the leftist-liberal,