Richard Baldwin writes,

Barry Eichengreen added specificity to this in January 2009 with his insightful column “Was the euro a mistake?”, noting: “What started as the Subprime Crisis in 2007 and morphed in the Global Credit Crisis in 2008 has become the Euro Crisis in 2009. Sober people are now contemplating whether a Eurozone member such as Greece might default on its debt.” He wrote that the alternative to default was “fiscal retrenchment, wage reductions, and assistance from the EU and the IMF for the cash-strapped government.”

He predicted – again dead on – that “[t]here will be demonstrations against the fiscal cuts and wage reductions. Politicians will lose support and governments will fall. The EU will resist providing financial assistance for its more troublesome members. But, ultimately, everyone will swallow hard and proceed … In the end, the EU will overcome its bailout aversion.” The farsightedness is astounding. In January 2009, few knew the Greeks had a problem serious enough to require debt restructuring.

Pointer from Brad DeLong, via Mark Thoma.

That sounds impressive. He also cites other economists. But a couple of cautionary notes.

1. The best way to develop a reputation as far-sighted is to make many vague, conditional predictions. Later, you call attention to those that sound correct, and if necessary you wiggle out of those that sound incorrect by pointing out the conditions or taking advantage of their vagueness. I am not accusing Eichengreen of doing this. I have others in mind. But what might Baldwin have found had he had searched through past articles and looked for bad predictions?

2. How best to generalize this point? My guess is that “Economists’ predictions should always be taken as gospel”

3. Is the correct lesson that we should pay attention when economists warn about sovereign debt issues? Consider that many of us have issued warnings about the United States.