In a manner of speaking, the legacy of renunciation of philosophy and methodology in graduate education led much of the orthodox economics profession, and many of the denizens of the neoliberal world of think tanks and media outlets, to behave from 2008 onward in ways rather similar to the Seekers. The parallels between the Seekers and the contemporary economics profession, on the one hand, and the Neoliberal Thought Collective, on the other, are, of course, not exact. The Seekers were disappointed when their world didn’t come to an end; economists and neoliberals were convinced their Great Moderation and neoliberal triumph would last forever, and were disappointed when it did appear to come to an end. The stipulated turning point never arrived for the Seekers, while the unsuspected turning point got the drop on the economists. The Seekers garnered no external support for their doctrines, indeed, quitting their jobs and contracts prior to their fated day; the economists, and more clearly, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, persisted in being richly rewarded by many constituencies for remaining stalwart in their beliefs. The public press was never friendly toward the Seekers; it turned on the economists only with the financial collapse. (There are now plentiful signs it has been reverting to its older slavish adoration, however.) But nonetheless, the shape of the reactions to cognitive dissonance turned out to be amazingly similar. The crisis, which at first blush might seem to have refuted almost everything that the NTC and the economic orthodoxy stood for, was in the fullness of time more often than not trumpeted from both the left and the right as reinforcing their adherence to, respectively, neoclassical economic theory or the neoliberal tradition.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 100