Is economics enamoured by taboos?

Since the global financial crisis, there have been serious doubts about the theory that the economy functions best with “invisible hand” and it should not be jeopardised through government “intervention”. In particular, the discipline (read economics) has somehow rejected the pattern of simple policy prescriptions — that any standard economics textbook imbibes. 

At the outset, it can be put on record that just as it is important not to overstate what economics can do, it is critical not to understate it. After all, who would expect to predict global outcomes that depend on the individual actions of about five billion