By Laura Conaway

Queen Elizabeth had a question, the same one many of you have asked: Why did so many economists fail to see the economic crisis coming? The queen got a chance to ask that at one of the discipline's great temples, the London School of Economics.

Queen Elizabeth.

Duck! The queens wants to know. (Sang Tan / WPA Pool/Getty Images © 2009)

In response, a group of leading economists have written the queen a three-page letter apologizing for a "psychology of denial." They wrote:

Everyone seemed to be doing their own job properly on its own merit. And according to standard measures of success, they were often doing it well. The failure was to see how collectively this added up to a series of interconnected imbalances over which no single authority had jurisdiction.

The back-and-forth has led to something of a parlor game at the Guardian, which asks, "Can you explain the crisis to the Queen?" Well, can you?

Bonus: American economists see slow recovery.

categories: Economic Scene

9:37 - July 27, 2009

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