The weight of the 1920s-decorated rooms, and the grey presence of so many headliners of the economics profession (which we are making the most of with the interviewing) is creating great confusion about what is “new” in New Economic Thinking. One line is nostalgia and it began with the opening session when Rogoff recalled with regret and humor how as a young man he was unengaged by Charles Kindleberger’s teachings . . . In a trope that I saw repeated thrice, it was said that economics is at a stage where a Copernican revolution has occurred but one needs still to use Ptolemaic cosmology for a few decades more, for policy advice . . . None of this is new, and worse still, none of it is very critical.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 13