Having studied economics for five years on a West German university I can assure you that economists know pretty much all the crap that happens and have their appropriate terms and models for it.

"Crooks", for example, are usually a symptom of the principal-agent problem and the three market failures of information asymmetry, power asymmetry and externalities.
We know our stuff - much better than laymen.



Qualitative argumentation is useful for understanding, quantitative modelling is usually necessary for validation and prediction.
Qualitative argumentation without quantitative backup is usually little more than a fairy tale or ideology.


Econometrics are necessary to find the values of the variables in models, and without these values you know nothing. In fact, a single wrong value can ruin the result of a model with dozens of variables completely.
You can guess values, of course - just as you can throw a spear blindly into a lake for fishing.


I actually wrote my macroeconomic dissertation for the diploma without a single formula, and got away with a 1.3 grade. The reason why I was able to get away without quantification was that the topics hadn't been researched well and wasn't in the stage of econometric research yet. The researchers were still discussing the basics of the topics.
Correspondingly, I was not able to give a definitive answer to any question that arose.