The Five Information Technology Blind Spots of Economists

On August 9, 2007, the European Central Bank (ECB) decided to organize a conference call with the twenty largest banks in Europe. The problem was that these banks were no longer lending each other money. Banks were in urgent need of money and as one of the bankers made it clear: “We need three things: we need cash, we need a lot, and we need it now” (NRC Handelsblad , 2012). The same day, the ECB started to inject 95 billion euro, followed the next day by the Federal Reserve System (FED) in the United States (US) with an injection of 24 billion US dollars. Eric van Heck [email protected] Professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.