Further thoughts on the fall of Bill Gross: While his personal behavior and management style may have been difficult, that’s hardly unusual among people in his position. All would have been forgiven, indeed never mentioned, but for his utter misjudgment of the bond market in 2011 – a misjudgment based on his failure, or more accurately refusal, to acknowledge the realities of a liquidity trap world.

But Gross was by no means alone in getting these things wrong. Indeed, 2011 was a sort of banner year for bad macroeconomic analysis by people who had no excuse for their wrong-headedness. And here’s the thing: aside from Gross, hardly any of the prominent wrong-headers have paid any price for their errors.

Think about it: 2011 was the year when Bowles and Simpson predicted a fiscal crisis within two years. There was never a hint of crisis, but BS are still given reverent treatment by the Beltway media.

2011 was also the year when Paul Ryan warned Ben Bernanke that he was “debasing” the dollar, arguing that rising commodity prices were the harbinger of runaway inflation; the Bank for International Settlements made a similar argument, albeit with less Ayn Rand. They were completely wrong, but Ryan is still the intellectual leader of the GOP and the BIS is still treated as a fount of wisdom.

The difference is, of course, that Gross had actual investors’ money on the line. But you should not take that to imply that the profit motive leads to intellectual clarity; Gross has been forced out at Pimco, but I’ve seen hardly any press coverage tying that to his having the wrong macro model.