People don't know what they are talking about after 2 intro econ courses. In fact, many intro econ course don't teach advance econ logic, mostly just basic supply and demand / utility curves. There is no way he was a successful econ major with that kind of thinking. Most schools have 4 levels of econ before courses get specialized. He's, at best, taken the first one. This is a good starting point:
http://www.amazon.com/Microeconomic-Theo...3945&sr=8-1
Popular economics really skews people's perception of a wonderful and reasonable social science.