Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition And 'Inside Job', page 1

I can't speak for Morgan Reynolds' expertise as an economist, but I can critique his claims on the WTC attacks.

He goes into his position in quite good detail here. Unfortunately for him, his detail in supporting his position is also his undoing, since he uses a number sites loaded with of bad assumptions, poor science, and completely lacking in any engineering credibility to support his case.

For instance he has apparently brought into the whole "there were no trusses, the WTC was built with I beams" nonsense as evidenced by the following:

There were 47 core columns connected to each other by steel beams within an overall rectangular core floor area of approximately 87 feet x 137 feet (26.5 m x 41.8 m). Each column had a rectangular cross section of approximately 36" x 14" at the base (90 cm x 36 cm) with steel 4" thick all around (100 mm), tapering to ¼" (6 mm) thickness at the top. Each floor was also extremely strong (p. 26), a grid of steel, contrary to claims of a lightweight "truss" system.

He also seems to be implying in the following passage that no airplanes hit the towers at all!!!

The engineering establishment’s theory has further difficulties. It is well-known that the hole in the west wing of the Pentagon, less than 18-foot diameter, was too small to accommodate a Boeing 757, but the North Tower’s hole wasn’t big enough for a Boeing 767 either, the alleged widebody airliner used on AA Flight 11 (officially tail number N334AA, FAA-listed as "destroyed"). A Boeing 767 has a wingspan of 155’ 1" (47.6 m) yet the maximum distance across the hole in the North Tower was about 115 feet (35 m), a hole undersized by some 40 feet or 26 percent. "The last few feet at the tips of the wings did not even break through the exterior columns," comments Hufschmid (p. 27). But 20 feet on each wing? I’d call that a substantial difference, not "the last few feet," especially since aircraft impact holes tend to be three times the size of the aircraft, reflecting the fact that fuel-laden airliners flying into buildings send things smashing about in a big way. The small size of the holes in both towers casts doubt on the airliner-impact hypothesis and favors professional demolition again. There were no reports of plane parts, especially wings, shorn off in the collision and bounced to the ground on the northeast side of the tower, to my knowledge, though FEMA reported a few small pieces to the south at Church street (pp. 68–9) and atop WTC-5 to the east of WTC-1.

Finally, his claim:

The fact that perimeter columns were not displaced suggests that the floors did not buckle or sag.

Has been directly contradicted by the NIST report, which has clear pictures of the exterior columns bowing inward significantly before the collapses.

Based on what he has written and the sites that he cites in his articles, I would put no faith at all into anything this man claims.