Quest for virtual wealth leaving us without riches

FINANCE Minister Michael Noonan recently referred to economists as “financial engineers”. This is a slight on engineers who base their craft on sound scientific modelling.

Economists study the markets, which seems to be a meandering process of trying to study how people behave with money and their quest for more of it. The only constant in that model is that people want more of it, the rest is best guesswork.

Economic growth should reflect something physical. The problem seems to be that the economic wealth of the world does not reflect anything in reality anymore. The value of coins of old was based on the metal they were made of.