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Ahem. Robert Samuelson says we need to tear up our economics textbooks based on his reading of Greg Mankiw. But you know, there are other best-selling textbooks 1/ krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/the… 
And here's the thing: Samuelson's big complaints about Mankiw are that he doesn't talk much about the Great Recession or the risks of financial panic. Um, our textbook talks a LOT about the GR and about how shadow banking brought a modern version of bank runs back 2/
So Samuelson's complaint about "economics" is really a complaint about one book – a book that has from the beginning downplayed recessions and crises. When Robin and I wrote our book, we decided from the 1st edition that short-run fluctuations were still a big deal 3/
1st edition was 2005, by the way, so this was before the Great Recession – but we had been strongly influenced by the Asian crisis of the 1990s. At the time, by the way, Samuelson was dismissing macroeconomics as useless 4/ pkarchive.org/theory/size.ht…
Ah, here we are. Samuelson saying that "the little picture is the big picture" – which is exactly what the 2008 crisis and aftermath proved wrong 5/ washingtonpost.com/archive/opinio…
OK, you get the point. Anyone who thinks that economists – even authors of principles books – haven't paid attention to the big stories of recent years just hasn't done his homework 6/
