My primary thesis here, and in the rest of this volume, is that the crisis has revealed a severe epistemological contradiction that festers at the heart of the modern economics profession; this has dovetailed with a new set of practices and institutions that have developed since 1980 to paper over the contradiction. It began when the economics profession tended to grow more neoliberal over the past few decades. We will take that proposition as given here, because we aim to explore one of its most important implications: namely, that it sets up a treacherous dynamic interplay between the economics profession and the general public, awkwardly brought closer to the surface by the crisis. In a word, neoliberal theory in the context of economic crisis creates problems for economists' self-image as public intellectuals.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 619