Is it bloggers or the Fed fouling up economic policy?

Last month, an economist at the Richmond Fed, Kartik Athreya, published an essay complaining that bloggers about economics don't know their stuff and/or oversimplify everything, thus interfering with the serious hard work of properly-credentialed and responsible economists such as him and his colleagues in the Federal Reserve banks.  I won't attempt to provide links to all the pushbacks by prominent economists in their blogs, but this post by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph is delicious. He provides a snarky review of the important things Fed economists seem not to know or to be able to get right, ending with the revelation that the Ph.D. in economics awarded to The Maestro, Alan Greenspan, was an honorary one 27 years after his M.A. and after he had been Chairman of the Counsel of Economic Advisors to President Ford.  Barron's has that story here.