The Great Pretenders: 50th Anniversary of Hayek’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Is Marked — and What an Apt Moment

The economic sage saw that the attempts of central bankers to control the markets is based on a ‘pretense of knowledge.’

AP/Charles Harrity
Friedrich Von Hayek on 'Meet the Press' in 1975. AP/Charles Harrity

This is the 50th anniversary of Friedrich Hayek’s 1974 Nobel Prize Lecture, “The Pretense of Knowledge.” In his brilliant presentation, which applies particularly to central banks and their yearning to be economic philosopher-kings, Hayek explained the inherent limits of economics and the inevitable failure of trying to make it a predictive mathematical science. 

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