You can do better.
The problem I have with Ferguson is the same problem I have with Greg Mankiw, the distinguished economics professor at Harvard and former member of the President's Council of Economics Advisors under Bush. Both of them achieved some level of status in their world and it went straight to their head. They ceased being thought leaders within their domain and instead became celebrity intellectuals across multiple disciplines.
Hence, Ferguson tried applying lessens from 1914 onto 2014 and butchered monetary theory with a call for inflation in 2009. As Judge Snells said, "We're waiting." Then there were his calls for austerity which gave academic support to the neanderthals at the ECB. That's worked well.
Some of his mistakes are ideologically driven. A lot of right wing economists have been saying similar things for the last 5 years. But, Ferguson isnt an economist. He's masquerading as an expert in a field he knows just enough of to get wrong in a spectacular fashion.
Mankiw, meanwhile, decided that economics wasnt good enough and has decided to weigh in on political philosophy without doing any apparent study ahead of time. His arguments would flunk an intro to logic class at a mid tier liberal arts school and he really should have sat in on an intro to ethics class at some point in time.
It requires an epic amount of hubris to wade into other disciplines with the expectation you have equivalent expertise. Both are long on knowledge and short on wisdom or understanding. The only thing those Harvard students are learning from them is arrogance. As to TFS' point about Ferguson, he ceased being a historian when he decided to become a celebrity intellectual.