I was just reading the excellent post on RealClimate skewering SuperFreakonomics, an open letter from University of Chicago climate scientist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert to his U of C colleague, economist Steve Levitt (co-author of SuperFreakonomics) showing painstakingly that simple arithmetic would have helped him avoid one of his key blunders.

The comment that made me laugh out loud was this one:

“Now perhaps we know how most American economists missed the greatest housing bubble/ derivatives superbubble ever unleashed on the American public.”

Maybe that could be the silver lining of the Steves’ dumb books—they will discredit mainstream economics!