Bernanke on economics

There's been quite a lot of coverage of former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke starting up a blog and a Twitter account. Someone - apologies, can't remember who - resurrected his 2013 speech, 'The Ten Suggestions', at the Baccalaureate Ceremony at Princeton, where he said of economics

Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much. However, careful economic analysis does have one important benefit, which is that it can help kill ideas that are completely logically inconsistent or wildly at variance with the data. This insight covers at least 90 percent of proposed economic policies.

The whole thing is worth a read - humour yes, but also quite a bit of wisdom. Speech here, and a video here.