Stability is the primary purpose of financial regulation. Efficiency is a distant second. Too bad for all of us economists and the likes of Alan Greenspan got it backward.

Econned by Yves Smith shows how economists persuaded the political and media elites that they knew what they were doing. Smith shows that they didn’t, and then shows how Wall Street traders and their bosses exploited the world those economists and their corporate sponsors created. The result was financial collapse. Economists aren’t held accountable, and neither are the people who profited.