Carmen Segarra revelations

I just came across the Carmen Segarra revelations via ProRepublica and This American Life.

Following through on the story I came across a Joseph N. DiStefano post on Philly.com.  In the post DiStefano quotes economist Steve Golub as follows:

Golub says economists in general need to return to basic analysis of the copious financial reports the government and banks generate. “But that’s not the kind of thing research economists like to do. The Fed 20 years ago decided to make their research more academic. Rather than do the humdrum policy stuff. At the New York Fed you got promoted based on academic articles. That’s not a terrible thing. But the economists weren’t motivated to really get down and dirty in the data. It’s just not what we do. We want a data set you can enter into a computer easily and run some statistical packages on. Rather than say, ‘What’s happening here?’”

Who does that? “Anthropologists. Economists have to be a little more like anthropologists to be successful. Take the policymakers, the economists and the regulators -- and connect the dots.”

Anthropology is an under appreciated discipline - just as economics is over valued in the public policy discourse.  The attachment of most economists to mathematical models that might work if data that is fundamentally unobservable were observable makes them too often easy dupes for the self interested - or, at best, foot soldiers for the conventional wisdom of the day.

Carmen Segarra fairly obviously has the sort of personal and intellectual integrity that is too rare in New York city.  Different, but the same as Harry Markopolos.