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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?

#81

Post by oDot »

state_less wrote: post #74
oDot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should buy umbrellas, and not listen to people saying it'll be sunny forever.

> The only school that has any explanation for this is the Austrian School of Economics. I doubt it’s the only ‘school’ that has an explanation. That there are cycles in the economy isn’t a very strong statement. Nor does it seem to apply here because this is a different cause than one underpinning a typical business cycle. Until this virus is wrestled to the ground somehow (e.g. distancing, sterilization, vaccine, h…

Well, they have a proven track record of predicting crises in a very precise manner. You can just browse YouTube to see it.

See other comments of my explaining the virus is a pin that burst a bubble already there.

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

#83

Post by oDot »

rjtavares wrote: post #65
nickysielicki wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A long term bull market does not define a bubble. No, but inverted yield curves do.

The only thing that defines a bubble is the post fact realization that it burst.

A P/E ratio of 94.33 for Amazon is surely a bubble.

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

#84

Post by Scea91 »

nicoburns wrote: post #59
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 best theory I've seen for crash cycles is: 1. The establishment encourages making credit widely available in order to pacify the less well off who would otherwise demand a better deal out of the social contract. 2. This leads to unsustainable debt, as people are forced into borrowing to meet basic needs with no means to pay it back. 3. Eventually this comes to a head as people begin to default, causes a cascading…

> 2. This leads to unsustainable debt, as people are forced into borrowing to meet basic needs with no means to pay it back.

People borrow for much more than basic needs and they do so voluntarily without anyone forcing them. This does not substantially affect your logic, but I think lots of the blame for mismanaging debt lies at the people in debt themselves.

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

#86

Post by tasubotadas »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #68
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 liked Taleb's "The Black Swan" but find his Twitter persona grating. He displays an attitude of, "anyone who doesn't agree with me is dumb". I think the opposite is needed now. Complex and difficult issues are better approached with humility, and a frank and open discussion of uncertainty.

On Twitter, for him, it is a completely justifiable approach, and he would be correct 99.99% of times.

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

#87

Post by axegon_ »

Currently nothing, ran out of books to read and amazon is taking forever to ship them, despite the hefty shipping fee I paid(currently two weeks from Austria to Bulgaria which is just over 1000 km away)... Rant aside, all of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books are a very good choice for anyone that hasn't read them.

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

#88

Post by smnplk »

nicoburns wrote: post #59
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 best theory I've seen for crash cycles is: 1. The establishment encourages making credit widely available in order to pacify the less well off who would otherwise demand a better deal out of the social contract. 2. This leads to unsustainable debt, as people are forced into borrowing to meet basic needs with no means to pay it back. 3. Eventually this comes to a head as people begin to default, causes a cascading…

The way I see it, it's the cheap money problem. Big businesses with lots of capital are incentivized to borrow cheap money and make stupid investments with that borrowed money.

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

#90

Post by aqqTwxye »

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…

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.
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