The New York Times posted an article written by Robert Shiller on why no one “saw” the housing bubble happen.

It is a perfect example on how so called experts are not that good after all, and also why governments are quick to turn situations around to make themselves look better.

Shiller argues that even the all-mighty Alan Greenspan, “a very serious student of the markets, didn’t see it, and, moreover, he didn’t see the stock market bubble of the 1990s, either. In his 2007 autobiography, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” he talks at some length about his suspicions in the 1990s that there was irrational exuberance in the stock market. But in the end, he says, he just couldn’t figure it out: “I’d come to realize that we’d never be able to identify irrational exuberance with certainty, much less act on it, until after the fact.””

The question in the blame game is the following, do over a million people lack education or does lawmakers (less than one million) lack proper understanding of human nature? I’ll let you that one to answer, but it is pretty clear in my eyes.

It’s well worth the read.

Hat tip Calculated Risk.