random thoughts: link macro and psychology

I've been planning for a long time to put together what macro-economists argue about the future/present state of research in this field; and then to make some humble inferences on how I see this. Talking about the state of macro these days is somehow equivalent to talking about how the world looks like after the big financial crisis and trying to make up models which are closer to the real facts. Nothing spectacular until now, right? This is what each model has been trying to do so far!

For the moment, I have in mind these recent projections which say that the financial crisis will come back. And I dare to make a link with any down period a person may have in his life (either due to some illness or just depression coming from some bad habits in his thinking or behavior); let's call this depression. The guy goes to the doctor who tells him he should do that and that and then he follows the advice, he gets better, he is happier! But, at a certain point, he turns out to his bad habits from greed or temporary lack of self-discipline or whatever. And then, he may eventually get depressed again!

This is the same as financial markets and, respectively, as economies in general: something goes wrong, we try to repair it, it gets better, but then we turn back to bad habits and, eventually, the bad thing occurs again, maybe in another form or magnitude, but having the same underline cause. No learning effect? Of course, on short term, as we have a rather short term memory (a generation like period, let's say), we may be more precautionary. Some may argue that this is why history is written: for next generations to learn from past errors. But is this really the case?

Update: I did not intend to be pessimistic in any sense. I believe that by assuming our vulnerability as humans, society and economy in the end, we may be more closer to understanding our behavior and tackle the problems which we encounter and the weaknesses we deal with. Now, translating this in models, probably has already been tried to a certain extent and will undoubtedly be tried in the future. And in the end this is what keeps all social sciences so interesting: there are always models to improve, questions to ask, assumptions to relax or not, in order to represent a better picture of reality.