Recently Nobel econ laureate Robert Shiller of Yale thinks they're all wrong.
In the introductory remarks to his new, free online course at Coursera, Shiller says that finance may have caused some of the problems that led to the financial crisis - but that giving up on finance is the exact thing we shouldn't be doing.
Here's the full transcript:
"The Great Recession caused millions of people to lose jobs their jobs or lose their homes, and find career prospects were derailed.
And fingers were pointed at the financial community.
That's a problem.
It seemed like the financial community was the cause of our most serious problems - but I found myself thinking, 'Yes this is a problem,' - and I don't mean to minimize it - 'But what about all of the strength that has developed preceding this crisis, the strength of our economies?' The world is going through an amazing revolution. Ever since Deng Xiaoping in China or Boris Yeltsin in Russia, we saw the development of financial capitalism all over the world. That development is real and important. It has its ups and down, it has crises, but those crises are manageable if one understands finance."
Shiller even invited former Hank Greenberg, the former head of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, to be the course's first guest speaker.
We're not able to upload the video, but you should definitely head over to Coursera and register.