I rated this story 5s almost across the board, because it is a very comprehensive mainstream analysis of how economists missed predicting the financial crisis. It's excellent - as far as it goes - but it misses some crucial real-world points. The most obvious one is that the experts involved are not disinterested observers - they have a career stake (and in many cases a financial one) in perpetuating the system. Another point is critical voices - and there were plenty - were filtered out by the press. For example, many people noticed that housing prices were rising unsustainably and that peoples' incomes weren't increasing fast enough to buy enough stuff to keep the game going, but their voices were ignored due to the group-think enforced by media gatekeepers. A third point is we live in a kleptocracy, a government by thieves. Low-level bribery might not be as common as in Iraq perhaps but this is only because the corruption takes place on a higher level, and in many cases is perfectly legal - for example, renting members of Congress to cause them to loosen regulations on complex financial trades, and then have them vote to cover ensuing losses. Until economics demonstrates its independence from centers of power, it will remain a field used by the powerful merely to justify what they were going to do in any case.