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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?

#231

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #120
tomrod wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economist here. Mostly agree with this sentiment. I listened to the National Association of Business Economists webinar yesterday presenting survey expectations for Q2. To say there was difference in opinions is an understatement. Opinion ranged from barely any impact to 50% GDP loss (annualized, so 1/4 of that for a quarter). You hear economists say things like "guns and butter do well in recessions." The same idea…

I like what I heard Tyler Cowen say a long time ago: a degree in economics is a great way to learn about a lot of ideas that sound good but don't work. (I'm paraphrasing, of course) I thought his point was great. There's some well-trodden ground in economics. If you learn nothing more but where the alligators are, you're probably going to do a lot better on that trip through the swamp you plan on taking. If nothing e…

Let's be a bit more specific here before people get the wrong idea. Economics doesn't work for predicting the stock market. Other than that, it works just fine. The principals of supply and demand and huge host of other issues are just fine and work great. It just doesn't translate to predicting equities.

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

#232

Post by ghastmaster »

RobertoG wrote: post #197
ghastmaster wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of the stock market, housing market, bond market, precious metals? Asset price inflation absolutely is happening. The FED up until now was able to keep the CPI increases fairly low even though they were creating trillions of dollars, because the money was locked into assets. This has had a severe effect on anyone in the market for these assets that have risen.

I though that, from the Austrian perspective, the stock market would be one of the last things to see inflation. Are not suppose the prices of stocks reflect the aggregate infinite wisdom of the market?

If the money supply was increased across the board this would likely be the case. However, the FED bank no longer operates in the way it was statutorily mandated originally. The FED purchases assets that inflate the stock market indirectly. The Federal subsidies and regulations combine with this to keep the money propping up the assets mentioned(gold only because of it being a historic hedge).

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

#233

Post by aguyfromnb »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #110
aqqTwxye wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists do not claim to know the economy, much less to the point of becoming rich. They are far more likely to insist that nobody can know such thing. You must be thinking of somebody else.

Hardly. Economists may believe in the idea, for example, that you can't time the market, but I have yet to meet an economist who doesn't have very strong ideas about the types of policies or interventions that are good for bad for the economy, and again it often feels like you get 10 economists in a room and you get 10 different diverging opinions.

>but I have yet to meet an economist who doesn't have very strong ideas about the types of policies or interventions that are good for bad for the economy

I have yet to met a person on the street who doesn't have strong opinions about what economic principles should be implemented.

>it often feels like you get 10 economists in a room and you get 10 different diverging opinions.

I don't understand why this is a bad thing. Progress is made by exploring diverging theories.

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

#234

Post by cl42 »

This is a bit of a self-promotional piece, but I put together a simple website that extracts sentences related to COVID-19 and economics/finance news: https://chimerais.com/covid19

I try to write a blog post once or twice a week as well, but this is more for myself -- just to actually force myself to synthesize everything going on. Happy to share if anyone is interested.

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

#236

Post by sideshowb »

sambarina wrote: post #63

"All" you have to do is watch "How the economic machine works (in 30 minutes)" by Ray Dalio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 Read his insights and watch his interviews. That's a good basic start. Everything more then that: Nobody really knows. I have read countless of books, but one thing you have to know: It is a market - period. Something has value just because another person wants to buy it (at a given…

For a longer term read I'd recommend Hill & Myatt, the Economics Anti Textbook. It's a fair introduction to Economics 101 but at the same time provides more in depth critique than an introductory book usually would, of where Economics 101 fails, and how it tends to get over-applied in policy.

Ha Joon Chang, Economics: the Users Guide and 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (don't dismiss it as an anti-capitalist treatise, it's not) are also good, lighter weight (unlike Hill & Myatt no maths) but give an overview of the different schools of economics and what can be drawn from each.

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

#237

Post by aguyfromnb »

pinky1417 wrote: post #153
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #57

Making 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…

Agree 100%. The whole reason why market economies - economies based on the decentralized mechanism we call "prices" - work better than any other economic system is because they're decentralized. If one person or group of experts could know the current wants/needs of millions of individuals, we wouldn't need prices and that person/group could predict the direction of the economy. Similarly, say all you care about is p…

>That was a lesson to me: conventional wisdom about the economy, even "wisdom" from "experts" in a segment of the economy, can be wildly inaccurate.

Conventional wisdom is wrong about all kinds of things, all the time. "Forecasts have been wrong, therefore forecasting is pointless" is the wrong lesson to take.

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

#238

Post by stopachka »

Three things:

1. Economics in one Lessons. One of the most powerful books I've read on the economy. Will help you rethink and see deeper 2. Dao of Capital. Book by Mark Spitznagel -- goes into tail risk hedging, and his counter-intuitive investment thesis. He made 4000% over Covid 3. Dalio's essays -- from "The changing world order" to "Debt Crises"

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

#240

Post by econbooks »

Ha-Joon Chang's works

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DgfOMpmo

Economics: The User's Guide https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/29/economics-the-...

Jane Jacobs

Cities and the Wealth of Nations https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-394-72911-0.htm...

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