One book NOT to read: "The Ant and the Grasshopper" by Aesop.
He got it completely wrong - for quite some time, Grasshoppers have been routinely bailed out with money stolen from the Ants (through interest rates way below inflation).
Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
161–170 of 313 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Keynesian would be fiscal policies Well most governments around the world have been running deficits (the US to the tune of~$1T annually) since the last recession. I consider that to be some pretty serious fiscal stimulus.
Most governments have been running deficits since forever, not since the last recession, after all, if there is economic grow, new money have to be created, and all money is originated in government spending. But that's just a reality of how the economy works, that doesn't mean necessarily that Keynesian policies are followed (beyond the automatic stabilizers that are certainly Keynesian in design). Keynesian policie…
> Most governments have been running deficits since forever
I don't think that's a fair assessment. The US has certainly been running deficits for a long time but the deficits of the last 10 year have been much larger (as a percentage of GDP) [1]. Some other countries [the exception not the rule] have been more prudent with their finances. In my part of the world New Zealand has been running a surplus since 2015 and prior to COVID-19 starting Australia was due to have a small surplus this year for the first time since the GFC.
> Keynesian policies would be to try to offset a fall in aggregated demand by increasing fiscal spending
I guess you can argue that spending hasn't been Keynesian enough.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-budget
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#163Consider a subscription to the British newspaper The Economist. It began publication in 1848 in protest against the British corn laws. The writing is superlative written with a rather sly sense of humor.
In particular, they collect and graph enormous amounts of data to augment their articles. It's much better than random posts found on the internet.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're talking about the U.S. that's mainly due to our reserve currency status and nothing else. And the money printing has driven certain sectors higher even in the face of low / stagnant growth. Stocks, real estate, etc being some of them. But you gotta understand that we export a great deal of our inflation. One day those dollars will come home to roost, but until then, Germany's balance sheet looks a hell of a…
The American Dollar was the world's reserve currency in the 1970s as well. They still managed high inflation. The subdued American inflation despite QE has a more technical and contingent explanation: the Fed started paying Interest on Excess Reserves (IOER) in 2008. Ie they reward banks for keeping the money they are printing out of the economy. Most of the time since then, the interest on short term US government b…
We decoupled from the gold standard in 1971, so there was quite a bit of digestion that had to occur with the switch to fiat. I agree the Fed has acted to keep a lot of money out of the economy but our M1 money supply is still only just over $4 trillion. However, if you look at dollar denominated debt in the world it is probably more than $100 trillion...so ironically there's more demand for dollars than there ever has been (as those debts must be paid in dollars), which has caused deflationary pressure on the USD.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#165John Ralston Saul's The Collapse of Globalism. Published ~2005, it (arguably) makes sense of the previous several decades of western economics. https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/the-collap...
I just read the blurb and summary on the page you linked to. It might be an interesting read, but the main thesis seems false? Globalism has done just fine. > Elsewhere, the world looks for answers to African debt. the AIDS epidemic, the return of fundamentalism and terrorism. all of which perversely refuse to disappear despite the theoretical rise in global prosperity. Most of these don't look so intractable any mor…
> Most of these don't look so intractable any more, even if we haven't solved them, yet.
who's we ?
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#166Making sense in what fashion, to what end? Investment opportunities? Proposed public policy changes? Where to look for a job? To a large degree the economy is unknowable. That's why you can get two economists in a room and receive seven opinions. Don't get me wrong; there's good value there. It's just that economics is an odd mix of philosophy and math. On my more cranky days I call it astrology for people who know c…
I believe this sentiment is mostly a symptom of the extreme prevalence of charlatans who use economics as a marketing tool rather than a social science. Economics is really just accounting, statistics and psychology. But mostly accounting. I think people get really worked up about the “unknowable” parts and fail to see that accounting can open up tremendous insights if we only take the time to understand it well. If…
After reading quite a lot about economic policies it sounds a lot like some sort of engineering - you have some levers/gadgets that you can use, but you have to understand the consequences of each of them and how the interact with the "real world" of companies and people participating in the economy.
Sure, people being certain about what's going to happen and when is akin to snake oil, but using good insight and tools to try and control how people are affected by something like a pandemic seems to me to be the role that economists need to play.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#167Where to begin? I’ve been reading about economics for about 15 years, and I have to say that this crisis has brought a level of clarity about certain economic truths that I never would have seen otherwise. First: accounting. I got an MBA five years ago and accounting was my favorite subject because it is behind everything that a business does. Accounting is the instrumentation that allows humans to organize their act…
Interesting take on accounting - I've never understood why anyone competent would be drawn to it.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#168Consider a subscription to the British newspaper The Economist. It began publication in 1848 in protest against the British corn laws. The writing is superlative written with a rather sly sense of humor. In particular, they collect and graph enormous amounts of data to augment their articles. It's much better than random posts found on the internet.
Very well written indeed, unfortunately owned by globalists since 2015 (check out the ownership change, if you are interested [1])
I had been an avid reader for 30 years, cancelled my subscription around 2015-2016, and I was not even aware of the new ownership at the time, I just sensed the change of their ideological orientation and did not like it one bit.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#169Best discussions on the economy I have found are on Macrovoices[0] podcast and Realvison[1] TV Both are macro focused and take as a given the audience is trying to make money or at least preserve assets. It's been an amazing few years listening to all the interviews and working over the ideas in my own head then seeing things play out in the markets and economy.
[0] https://www.macrovoices.com/ [1] https://www.realvision.com/
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?
#170What I'd like to know is that is the middle class going to shrink further as a result of the current set of events?