Economics

For years, transplant surgeons have struggled with a vexing problem: seriously ill patients desperate for new kidneys and healthy people who were willing to donate an organ but had the wrong tissue type. Somewhere in the country, they knew, the right combinations of donors and recipients existed, but matching them often proved impossible. With most other items, freely set prices enable markets to allocate goods efficiently. But in areas such as organ transplants, societies shun the idea of a cash transaction.

Great crises have a way of reminding us that acting as though we know perfectly well what the future holds almost always leads to disaster. That's especially true in economics, which tends to underscore the murkiness of the real world by dealing out surprises one after another -- booms, crashes, bubbles, you name it. It's fitting, therefore, that the recent economic meltdown has begun to restore that great apostle of uncertainty, John Maynard...

Question--If 20 of the 32 Nobel awards in economics went to economists from the U.S., how come we are in an economic gridlock? ALEX SHAMES Escondido

Walnut Valley Unified School District's 3,300 high school students will be required to take a five-unit course in economics beginning in the summer of 1987. The Board of Education is expected to give final approval in June to the new course, mandated by the Legislature. Jane Gawronski, assistant superintendent for educational services, said 30 classes in economics will be introduced and taught by district teachers who have backgrounds in economics.

Eric J. Weiner's commentary, "A legacy of deregulation" (Opinion, Nov. 14), lumps economics and finance as identical disciplines. Weiner sees Alan Greenspan as "the oracle of the nation's economy" and also as someone with a commitment to "reshape the financial community." As chairman of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan concentrated on the flow of money and credit, which represent wealth (although not with great accuracy). That's a financial task. He virtually ignored economics, which deals primarily with the extraction and use of the planet's resources -- the world's real wealth.

Once again the fall fashions in emperor's clothes are exquisite: In 1985 the Nobel Prize in literature went to Claude Simon, a man whose writing is unencumbered by grammar or plot. Now the 1986 Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to James Buchanan, a man who has mastered the seemingly unremarkable observation that politicians and bureaucrats act to serve their own self-interests rather than the broader public interests. I have determined to nominate myself for the 1987 Nobel Prize in medicine: I have observed and quantified the phenomenon that when I eat too much chocolate cake I get fat. DOUG LEVINSON Santa Monica

George W. Bush is in denial. ("Bush seeks to calm anxieties," March 15.) Like most Republicans since Reagan's presidency, he believes in supply-side economics -- that if the wealthy are getting wealthier, the economy is good; that if he keeps giving wealthy people and businesses big tax breaks, the budget will be balanced by 2012. This philosophy has left us with a $9-trillion national debt, a shaky financial structure and a sinking, stagflated economy. Randell Hill La Verne

The media's role Re "9 more killed in Afghan protests," April 3 I was touring in Egypt last September when the Koran-burning story was originally reported. The story was being continuously repeated on cable news channels. I wanted to cringe when I was out in public; what must these people think of us? The media blitz was still on when I returned home. U.S. generals, politicians and State Department officials all expressed the view that the Rev. Terry Jones' irresponsible actions could have deadly consequences.