Bernanke makes case for economics amid criticism

Fed chief Ben Bernanke made a spirited apology for economics Friday, defending a discipline derided for failing to predict the financial crisis and accused of being numb to Americans' plight.
Speaking to a group of his former colleagues at Princeton University, the chairman of the Federal Reserve said economics was not broken despite failures in the run-up to worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
"The episode as a whole has not been kind to the reputation of economic and economists, and understandably so," he said.
"Almost universally, economists failed to predict the nature, timing, or severity of the crisis," he told a conference at the New Jersey university where he was once a tenured professor.
But, he added: "I don't think the crisis by any means requires us to rethink economics and finance from the ground up."
The Fed chair, who is one of world's foremost experts on the economics of the Great Depression, said it was economic management and analysis, not theory that had failed.