An enduring lesson of financial crises, you point out, is that “political constraints” tend to interfere with economically efficient solutions (“The Curse of Politics,” April 18, 2009). But who is to blame that “academic economists” often propose solutions that gloss over real-world political and legal obstacles? Politicians? Lawmakers? In the last analysis, it is the human species as a whole that is to blame for being so wooly-headed when it comes to economically efficient solutions to financial crises and other economic horrors. Or is it? Rather, it is the academic economists who are negligent of the political and/or legal constraints they actually face when they propose economically efficient solutions. Once again, this is a proclivity of a profession that has long left the real world for mathematical niceties of their ever more intricate models. I would thus propose a much more appropriate title to your article: “The Curse of Economics.”