Critics complain that economists arrogantly pretend to understand far more than they actually do. This criticism is too weak. The mainstream claims profound knowledge of the economy, understands almost nothing and obscures almost everything. This assertion may strike the reader as either shocking or slanderous (or both), rather like accusing engineers of knowing nothing about mechanical devices.

Nonetheless, it is true and not difficult to demonstrate.

What is difficult is to explain why so many people in so many countries of the world revere economists as gurus. In part it may come from the econfaker practice of using in-group terminology whose meaning to the layperson remains obscurely impenetrable. I treat this misplaced reverence at some length, because it reflects a stronger version of the hypothesis attributed to Abraham Lincoln, that most of the people can be fooled not just some of the time, but most of the time (especially if the media are in the hands of those who benefit from the mainstream economic ideology). Perhaps more appropriate to describe the broad acceptance of the reactionary banalities of economists is “a sucker is born every minute” (origin highly disputed).