The UK economists wrote a rather lengthy letter to the Queen, in an attempt to answer the question raised by the Queen 'why had nobody noticed that the credit crunch was on its way?'. - and the answer is:
'In summary, Your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.'
'Collective Imagination Failure'? I know 'market failure' and 'government failure'.... but failure of collective imagination?. Simpler answer, though not politically correct of course, would be 'the Economics is not, at the least has not yet been, able to predict a course of such a complex phenomenon'.
No, it is not a shame. Suppose you put a certain pressure on a glass. Some physicists would be able to tell you the glass will break at some time, in some way in the future, but not exactly when nor how.
