Poised as Prophets : Economists Emerge as Unlikely Gurus in an Age of Financial Anxiety

Just when did the Economist start showing up at the hairdresser’s, right next to Cosmopolitan and Nail & Beauty Trends?

When did GATT become a topic for polite conversation?

When, more precisely, did economists turn into today’s hot tickets--media darlings whom economic columnist Robert Kuttner describes as “the new priesthood” and Harvard political economist Robert Reich calls “prophets whose every words are clung to by people who have no other prophets”?

No one can pinpoint when the dismal science stopped being quite so dismal, and certainly the increasingly sorry state of America’s own economy has vaulted those who profess to understand it into the limelight. As political analyst William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington puts it, “You’re talking about an agenda, and the agenda is now economics and nothing else.”

“You see these guys on all the time, because we’re really in a tough time,” says Laura Wessner of ABC-TV’s “Nightline.” “Economics is the major story of the year.”

Economists, Wessner notes, talk about money--and money is often a synonym for power.

“It’s also sexy,” she says.

This is not to say that exponents of economics have assumed the rank of bona fide sex symbols. To date, no economist has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone--although Allen Sinai, president and CEO of the Boston Company Economic Advisers, has graced the front of Money magazine, twice.

Although they may not yet be full-fledged household names, a handful of economists have been turned into familiar media commodities by the increased focus on their field. Leading the list is Lester Thurow, dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose wavy hair, blue eyes and economic bons mots have earned him the status of what Schneider calls--not without a note of envy--”the movie star” of economics.

Robert Reich, who teaches at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, also finds that “bewilderment over the global economy” is making him into a fixture on national television and radio. Reich, a liberal, says that what he and fellow Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, chairman of former President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, have in common is “an ‘e’ and an ‘i’ in our last names”--and often the two are paired as yin-and-yang experts on the same panels or programs.

Kuttner, whose column appears in newspapers nationwide and who is a frequent radio and television guest, says the demand for his opinions is reflected in an increasing number of speaking engagements.

“I’m not exactly at the local mall, but I am on the lecture circuit,” says Kuttner, who--like other economists--can command hefty fees for appearances.

In one recent three-day period, another frequently quoted columnist, Julianne Malveaux of USA Today and CNN, dashed between consulting and speaking appearances in Colorado, California and Washington, D.C.

Malveaux, who holds a doctorate from MIT, says the economic crisis also has made her a star on the cocktail-party circuit. Not so long ago, people’s eyes glazed over when she said the word economist , but now “you get one of three responses,” Malveaux says. “ ‘Where should I put my money?’ ‘I flunked economics in college.’ Or, ‘Where are we going to be in a year?’ ”

At Stanford University, Milton Friedman, praised by some and damned by others as the architect of Reaganomics, often avoids his office at the school’s Hoover Institution because the crush of media calls is so great.

And barely a day goes by when Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan is not on television, trying to explain this country’s economic turmoil to Congress and the nation.

Mary Lane, an assistant to Thurow, says she often groans when she hears the news on the way home from the office.

“I turn on the radio, and I know the phone’s going to be flooded tomorrow,” Lane laments.

Thurow, who served on Lyndon B. Johnson’s Council of Economic Advisers, has written for numerous non-academic publications, including Newsweek and The Times, and was once the subject of a segment on “60 Minutes.” In a January, 1990, cover story, The Atlantic magazine called Thurow “the man with all the answers.”

If his media popularity has increased, says Thurow, it is only a testimony to America’s current economic uncertainty.

“It has always been true that economists are more in demand in bad times than in good times,” he says.

Two of Thurow’s books, “The Zero-Sum Society” and “The Zero-Sum Solution,” have been bestsellers. Representatives of William Morrow, which will publish his latest literary effort in April, expect nothing less for “Head to Head,” Thurow’s eerily prescient book about this country’s weakening role in global economics.

Adrian Zackheim, Morrow’s executive editor, says he invited Thurow to speak at his company’s recent sales conference, an honor that might typically be reserved for one of Morrow’s more commercial authors, such as suspense novelist Ken Follett.

“He condensed his entire thesis into three minutes, and at the end of that, all these reps stood up and said, ‘You must say more!’ ” Zackheim recalls.

“I’m bringing this MIT professor down to a sales conference--I wasn’t prepared for this kind of reaction,” Zackheim says. “It was like a Beatles concert.”

That kind of response is all the more amazing, says Kuttner, since economics has been traditionally seen as “dull, incomprehensible and also dour,” and its practitioners have been widely regarded as “people who didn’t have the personality of accountants.”

But, Kuttner says, “I suppose if someone thinks you’re a guru, you develop a personality.”

Still, Reich contends economists also boast a certain moxie not commonly associated with social scientists, who tend to make their careers out of describing social ills.

“The only people with the audacity to be prescriptive are people who are often called economists,” he says.

What all this means to normal mortals, the public at large, is another question. Kurt Aldag, a New York publicist, says economists are attaining a new level of credibility because “we’re in a crisis, and they’re like the doctors.”

But Meg Anderson, an elementary schoolteacher in the Boston area, says she pays no attention to economists. “I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.”

Theresa Muth, an administrator for an adoption program near San Francisco, says she feels overwhelmed: “Every time I turn on the radio or TV, there’s an economist.” She says she discounts most of what they say because “they’re out of touch. They have jobs.”

But America’s attention span is as fickle as the economy itself. Economists who have finally mastered the art of choosing a dress or necktie for television may before too long find themselves sound-biting in the wind.

“These things are cyclical,” says Sinai. “We also loved Hula-Hoops for a while.”