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Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#211

Post by paganel »

barrenko wrote: post #189
myth_buster wrote: post #124

Behavioral Economics - Thaler Kahneman Tversky et Al. If you are referencing to the fallout from covid, it's essentially the effect of global commerce coming to screeching halt. As CEO of GS said, no one has a clue on what's going to happen in Q2 and beyond, and if they say they do, they are BS'g. It's a Black swan event. Most forecasting models are ineffective. Whether it would be a V, U, L recession is anyone's gue…

It's NOT a black swan event.

Not the OP but we've last had a pandemic of such proportions 100 years ago, and back then the world was not as inter-connected and inter-dependent as it is right now. Even during WW1 and WW2 industry and the economy itself were working (sometimes at full capacity), a fact that it is not happening right now. We've never had half of the planet's population in some sort of lockdown, that is the definition of a "black sawn event".

Yeah, one could say that things could have been better prepared (I'm in that camp), but one can never truly prepare for half of the working population being put on indeterminate leave on such great a scale.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#212

Post by PKop »

These twitter accounts:

https://twitter.com/LukeGromen

https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact

https://twitter.com/darenpa72

blog:

https://www.lynalden.com/

Common thread is topics around currency dynamics, and US Dollar reserve currency affecting..many things: trade, markets, geopolitics.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#213

Post by jiscariot »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #15

Nassim N. Taleb, author of BlackSwan books. His thinking about risk/probability is timeless. Frequently publishes links to his papers and debunks the BS-peddlers on his twitter: https://twitter.com/nntaleb

I like Taleb and really enjoyed Anti-Fragile and The Black Swan. His personality doesn't bother me too much, but I do think those two books could be 1/3 the size.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#214

Post by tumetab1 »

RobertoG wrote: post #80
postingawayonhn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the Keynesian response to the last crisis is what has left us so overleveraged and poorly prepared for this one.

What Keynesian response? A Keynesian response would be a fiscal response to a fall in aggregate demand by governments, not a monetary one by central banks.

That's the old problem that those who call themselves, and between them, keynesians ignore the first part of fiscal responsibility on good times.

According to tome better read than me it doesn't help that Keynes ideas floated during his writings so many contradictory ideas can be read and/or inferred from it.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#215

Post by [deleted] »

barrenko wrote: post #189
myth_buster wrote: post #124

Behavioral Economics - Thaler Kahneman Tversky et Al. If you are referencing to the fallout from covid, it's essentially the effect of global commerce coming to screeching halt. As CEO of GS said, no one has a clue on what's going to happen in Q2 and beyond, and if they say they do, they are BS'g. It's a Black swan event. Most forecasting models are ineffective. Whether it would be a V, U, L recession is anyone's gue…

It's NOT a black swan event.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#216

Post by koheripbal »

PKop wrote: post #212

These twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/LukeGromen https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact https://twitter.com/darenpa72 blog: https://www.lynalden.com/ Common thread is topics around currency dynamics, and US Dollar reserve currency affecting..many things: trade, markets, geopolitics.

It's hard to under-emphasize the long term impacts of the Fed's actions to print (not literally print but buy assets (treasuries, corporate bonds, and even amazingly public EQUITY) in exchange for cash), and the impact it will have on the USD - the global reserve currency.

Anyone who claims to know for certain what the impact will be, is a fool or a liar. We are in unprecedented monetary policy times.

Maybe USD is cementing it's position as the global currency standard, maybe this will spell the demise of the USD and the US' economic collapse, or maybe not much will change at all. There are arguments for all three to be true.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#217

Post by Zenst »

You will see mentalities lean more towards a cell based distrubution system over a global one and by that, production spread more with many countries waking up to being dependant upon others and looking at it as if they are at war with a country that makes all the guns in the world style thinking will play out politicaly more.

So a shift away form outsourcing, at least outsourcing out of country in full as has been the case in many area's of production alone.

Equally, resource/asset stripping may well be rife in the fallout with the ability to buy up companies cheaper and be instances in which those value of assets changing quicker than the company values them. They may own some unused warehouses that on the books been almost written off and yet perfect venue for manufacturing boom.

But so many things so high up in the air, you can never see a true picture of tomorrow, but can get some idea's and those ideas will change and flesh out in the long-run. But it's the overall trends and psychology is probably as useful a skill in predicting the markets than maths in today's times. Which kinda shows how up in the air everything is.

Only thing for sure, soon as one company comes up with a cure, you will see a jump in that companies share price, even if they was to do it all for free.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#218

Post by dahdum »

sfj wrote: post #196
snow_mac wrote: post #191

I'm reading absolutely nothing. I'm staying away from the markets and my investment accounts. Right now we're down from the trump bump; atleast last week we were. My 401k and college fund (index fund) for my kid are all in the shitter. Therefore, my best advice for you is to hoard cash (3-12 months expenses), cut expenses and try not to freak the fuck out right now

How can you suggest to be in cash when they are literally printing trillions with no sign it will slow down? I know that a lot of it is supposedly not going to make it into the real economy. But if there is one thing for sure, it's that the government is going to behave recklessly and fuck it up.

The inflation target is still 2% despite the easing. I'm not aware of any indicators showing it'll exceed that, but it's easy to funnel your cash into TIPS or similar if needed. If the lockdown continues and the recession deepens the more valuable cash will be. If it ends soon and the economy rebounds you're out the opportunity cost.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#219

Post by mountainboot »

oDot wrote: post #19

The only school that has any explanation for this is the Austrian School of Economics. Their theory of the business cycle is the reason they successfully predict every crisis to the tee (except for timing, no one can do that), while other economists are just blown away in surprise that it even happened. Mises and Hayek wrote big and hard to read books about it, but two that explain this to the layman are "Meltdown" b…

Predict every crisis to the tee? Citation needed. Reminds me of the economists have "predicted nine of the last five American recessions."

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#220

Post by jeffreyrogers »

fanzhang wrote: post #116
oDot wrote: post #19

The only school that has any explanation for this is the Austrian School of Economics. Their theory of the business cycle is the reason they successfully predict every crisis to the tee (except for timing, no one can do that), while other economists are just blown away in surprise that it even happened. Mises and Hayek wrote big and hard to read books about it, but two that explain this to the layman are "Meltdown" b…

The Austrian School seems to have been wrong about the last 15 years' money printing causing inflation. In particular, the general Austrian school would have predicted a lot more inflation by now. The prediction on this has fared so poorly that the last 15 years has given rise to a school nearly diametrically opposite to the Austrian school: modern monetary theory. (My understanding of the Austrian response to this i…

I think there is a lot of inflation if you measure it properly. We say inflation is low because we adjust for quality. So they say sure, a car costs more now than in 2000 but it has more features so if you adjust for quality it is cheaper. Same goes for other goods like computers, smartphones, etc. The problem is, the cheaper versions of these goods don't exist anymore, because the more expensive version is effectively required to not handicap yourself.

Similarly, things like housing, healthcare costs, schooling costs, etc. are not well captured by the inflation metric, but have grown wildly in the last few decades.

The purchasing power of the average person is probably worse now than it was in 2007 if you look at what people actually have to spend money on versus the artificial basket of quality adjusted goods used to measure inflation.

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