Economists are learning from the financial crisis, but investors should not relax. The gaps in the profession’s knowledge were well explained in the International Monetary Fund’s harsh assessment of its own intellectual shortcomings before 2007. The list is daunting: excessive trust in both financial markets and the new techniques of financial risk-spreading, an inadequate understanding of how finance influences the real economy, and an over-reliance on models “as the only valid tool to analyse economic circumstances that are too complex for modelling”.
經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家正在吸取金融危機(jī)的教訓(xùn)，但投資者不應(yīng)該放松。國(guó)際貨幣基金組織(IMF)對(duì)自身2007年前知識(shí)缺陷所做的嚴(yán)厲評(píng)估，充分說(shuō)明了專業(yè)知識(shí)的不足。評(píng)估中列舉的問(wèn)題令人生畏：過(guò)分信任金融市場(chǎng)和分散金融風(fēng)險(xiǎn)的新技術(shù)；對(duì)金融對(duì)實(shí)體經(jīng)濟(jì)的影響了解不足；過(guò)度依賴模型，“把它作為分析經(jīng)濟(jì)環(huán)境的唯一有效工具，而經(jīng)濟(jì)環(huán)境有時(shí)過(guò)于復(fù)雜，無(wú)法建立模型”。