LINK: Mr. Roberts is decidedly not in the materialist camp. He has described himself as a believer, a religious Jew, and he has a penchant for literature. One of his books is an “economic romance” about a young high-school teacher who woos a colleague over talk of the invisible hand. In another of his novels, a heavenly magistrate sends a 19th-century economist back to America to discredit protectionism…
Several years ago, Mr. Roberts was pressed by a reporter to put a number on how many jobs the North American Free Trade Agreement had created. When Mr. Roberts replied that he had no idea, the reporter accused him of ducking the question. “He said—he literally said this—‘But you’re a professional economist,’ ” Mr. Roberts recounts. “He meant, ‘Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that your job?’ And of course my answer is no. We’re not good at that.”
