
Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy? - 8611m
With so much happening so suddenly, what are you reading to make sense of the Economy and markets.
======
DanielBMarkham
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 calculus.

If the economy were knowable to the degree that some economists claim to know
it, they'd all be billionaires. So my advice is to scope down your question to
something a bit more workable.

~~~
smoyer
My favorite fight between two economists -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc)

~~~
ghostpepper
This is actually a sequel to the first "Keynes vs Hayek rap battle"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-
Sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk)

~~~
smoyer
Yes it is ... I like the second video better but I should have mentioned the
first as context.

------
sambarina
"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](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 price). That's basically all there is. If you think that
some asset is worth more in 10 years then it is now - buy it.

The "markets" go heavily up and down currently. That's just because different
people price in the current health crisis in different ways.

~~~
yamrzou
I wish there was a book (or even video lectures) that goes more in depth, but
with the same style as that video.

~~~
edsykes
Not in the same style, but this is the research that the video summary is
based upon. [https://www.principles.com/big-debt-
crises/](https://www.principles.com/big-debt-crises/)

It's free

------
vmurthy
It helps to know what "making sense" means to you? If it means "Will my job be
safe for the next 12 months", the reading will be different.

If it means "What 10-15 stocks are poised to give me great returns in the next
5 years", the reading will be different (this would be sector reports, 10-Ks
etc)

If it means "how can I ensure that another economic shock won't destroy my
wealth or plans for FIRE", the reading will be different.

FWIW, I am finishing up a book called "Contagion" [0] (not the fiction one )
and should start reading "Pale Rider" [1] about the 1918 pandemic. I've found
that history offers guidance and opens your mind to possibilities thus
offering solace.

[0] [https://www.amazon.in/Rules-Contagion-Outbreaks-
Infectious-D...](https://www.amazon.in/Rules-Contagion-Outbreaks-Infectious-
Diseases-
ebook/dp/B07JLSHT7M/ref=sr_1_1?crid=130ZNCJX4G38D&dchild=1&keywords=the+rules+of+contagion+why+things+spread+-+and+why+they+stop&qid=1586859470&sprefix=contagion+why%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-1)

[1] [https://www.amazon.in/Pale-Rider-Spanish-Changed-World-
ebook...](https://www.amazon.in/Pale-Rider-Spanish-Changed-World-
ebook/dp/B01GH07CG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=329SBG2GB38NH&dchild=1&keywords=1918+flu&qid=1586859519&sprefix=1918%2Caps%2C405&sr=8-1)

~~~
selimthegrim
For a second I thought you were mentioning Pale Horse, Pale Rider

------
dacohenii
Not reading per se, but I've listened to Marketplace podcast [0] almost daily
for years at this point, and I find it invaluable for economic news and
interpretation -- especially now.

Also recommend Marketplace's podcast Make Me Smart [1], which is an informal
deep dive on a single subject. It's nominally a weekly podcast, but they're
now releasing a 10-minute daily version.

Finally, NPR's Planet Money [2] and their daily podcast The Indicator [3] are
entertaining and education as well.

[0] [https://www.marketplace.org/](https://www.marketplace.org/) [1]
[https://www.marketplace.org/shows/make-me-smart-with-kai-
and...](https://www.marketplace.org/shows/make-me-smart-with-kai-and-molly/)
[2] [https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-
money/](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money/) [3]
[https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-
plane...](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money)

~~~
jldugger
Honestly, I find Marketplace's obsession with politics annoying. IDK if they
just have an easier time sourcing interviews from government officials because
public radio or something, but it feels like even in times of non-distress
they lean heavy on policy and lean on actual markets.

Look at the non-COVID Make Me Smart topics as an example:

\- Housing policy \- Corporate social responsibility \- food policy to fight
global poverty \- the equal rights act \- facebook and US elections \-
regulating the internet with section 230 \- an interview with a senior
politico editor about the school-skills-jobs pipeline \- why private equity
needs to be regulated

That said, I do appreciate the Marketplace interviews with 'regular small
business owners' Marketplace has been doing lately. Ranchers, Mississippi
freighters, factory operators, etc.

In terms of other podcasts, Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast[1] is a nice long
form podcast with subject matter experts. Their guests also likely have a
political agenda, but you at least get exposed to the inner workings of a
market. A recent pair of podcasts provides a good example: a few months ago
they talked with a guest about an unusual feature of Korean retail banking,
the structured note. They provide investors--primarily retirees--a fixed 7.8
percent return if the market doesn't drop by a huge margin. Otherwise,
investors are stuck with the return of the underlying benchmark (which is down
a huge margin). Well, last month exactly that exact tail risk scenario
triggered, and they brought the guest back on to further discuss how this
compares with previous bank crisis episodes.

[1]:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/odd_lots](https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/odd_lots)

~~~
_curious_
"I find Marketplace's obsession with politics annoying" Same - seems shallow.

------
passer_byer
Consider 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.

~~~
jazzyk
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.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group)

~~~
Nasrudith
What? They bought up another company in 2015. Not the other way around. Why
would that even be a bad thing?

~~~
jazzyk
Please read carefully.

The Agnelli family owns 43.4%, members of the Rothschild family own 21%, other
big corporate/rich families interests own the rest. Lots of "Sirs", "Ladies"
and "Baronesses" on the board of directors, as you can see below.

From the Wikipedia page:

Pearson PLC held a 50% shareholding via The Financial Times Limited until
August 2015; at that time Pearson sold their share in the Economist. The
Agnelli family's Exor paid £287m to raise their stake from 4.7% to 43.4%,
while the Economist paid £182m for the balance of 5.04m shares which will be
distributed to current shareholders.[2] Aside from the Agnelli family, smaller
shareholders in the company include Cadbury, Rothschild (21%), Schroder,
Layton and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former
staff shareholders.[2][3]

The current members of the board of directors of The Economist Group are:
Rupert Pennant-Rea (Chairman), Zanny Minton Beddoes (editor-in-chief of The
Economist), Lady Suzanne Heywood, Brent Hoberman, Sir David Bell, John Elkann,
Alex Karp, Sir Simon Robertson, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Chris Stibbs
and Baroness Jowell.[12]

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild publicly supports many politicians including
Hillary Clinton.

~~~
sanderjd
Isn't your thesis that this situation changed in 2015? I don't know for sure,
but I always assumed the Economist has always been run by a bunch of Sirs and
Ladies... I have read and quite liked the magazine for a couple decades and
they have seemed consistently elitist, pro-market, and globalist during that
time. It is something I like, that they have a strong identifiable editorial
perspective, unlike newspapers that have some claim to neutrality, which
mostly makes their biases harder to delineate and more arguable.

~~~
jazzyk
Whether it is the Sirs/Ladies, or the Elkanns or the Rothschilds, they are
interested in continuing the current status quo, enriching the 1% that they
belong to, at the cost of everyone else.

The Economist used to be pro-small-business free market. At some point they
started justifying outsourcing as "free trade", which benefited big companies
like Apple, etc. and stagnated or starved small businesses (and the
productivity/innovation that comes from it), not to mention labor providers
(even highly educated ones, such as software engineers :-))

This has proven to be quite bad for the US and Europe (except the 1%, whose
interests The Economist represents through ownership) - and it may get even
worse when money-printing will stop working at some point.

~~~
sanderjd
You are missing my point: this has always been their editorial stance. It may
have always been a reason not to read them if you're not into it, but it's not
a _new_ reason.

~~~
jazzyk
As I mentioned I had been a subscriber for 30 years.

And no, I am not missing your point. There was a clear change in direction a
few years ago - as I mentioned, I sensed it, but was not aware of the
ownership change at the time.

You either did not notice or you just started reading them - good for you.
Enjoy.

~~~
sanderjd
You may be right, but I don't see it. I have been reading since about 2005 and
I don't recall seeing a strong stance against outsourcing at any point in that
time. It would have struck me as surprising if I had, since they are broadly
in favor of free trade, and outsourcing clearly fits the bill (even if you put
it in scare quotes).

I don't really disagree with you about any of the points you're making, which
means I often or usually don't agree with the Economist on these points, I
just think it's a weird critique of the Economist to accuse them of being
globalist, free trade, neoliberals; to me it's like, yeah, they are the
Economist... It seems like accusing Jacobin of being socialist.

Maybe this change happened before 2005? I'd be interested in seeing some
receipts. Are there some anti-outsourcing articles from way back that I've
missed?

------
jotakami
Where 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 activity across
tremendous scale and complexity and still be confident that they are producing
value (making a profit). In the modern economy, accounting is everything. Try
reading Jerome Levy’s “Where Profits Come From” to check your accounting
chops:
[https://www.levyforecast.com/assets/Profits.pdf](https://www.levyforecast.com/assets/Profits.pdf)

~~~
jonahbenton
Should be the top comment. Accounting is everything. It is the physics of the
economy.

There is a common fiction to money matters that everyone has to share- whether
or not they know it- and the language in which that fiction is written is
accounting.

~~~
_curious_
"There is a common fiction to money matters that everyone has to share-
whether or not they know it- and the language in which that fiction is written
is accounting."

Poetic.

------
yaa_minu
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Basic Economics[1] by Thomas Sowell.

It's a fairly detailed book but it's worth the time. If you're too busy to
read a whole book, you might want to take a look at "Economics in One Lesson"
[2] by Herny Hazlitt.

The foundation for economic education[3] has some great articles too about
economics and public choice.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-
Sowel/dp/04650...](https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-
Sowel/dp/0465060730) [2]
[https://fee.org/media/14946/economicsinonelesson.pdf](https://fee.org/media/14946/economicsinonelesson.pdf)
[3] [https://fee.org](https://fee.org)

------
chrisco255
Real Vision Finance by Raoul Pal and others. They are a subscription based
macro-finance and economic analysis platform with some of the highest quality
interviews I've ever seen on this subject. Raoul and his team are great
synthesizers and do a great job at pulling in people from different
disciplines and specialties. They release daily updates and have an interview
catalog going back several years. They have many free videos on their YouTube
channel but I pay for the subscription and it's been well worth it. Check out
their YouTube channel:

[https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCBH5VZE_Y4F3CMcPIzPEB5A](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCBH5VZE_Y4F3CMcPIzPEB5A)

------
oDot
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" by Tom Woods[0] and "How An Economy
Grows And Why It Crashes" by Peter Schiff[1]. The first is an explanation
using the 2008 crisis, and the second is a very amusing yet educating economy
lesson told as a kids' story.

Another book that can help grasp this, although I wouldn't read it first, is
"The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself" by James Grant.

If you're interested in the actual business cycle theory, Tom Woods explained
it briefly while promoting Meltdown. Explanation starts 14:03:

[https://youtu.be/NBwJm68FkMc?t=844](https://youtu.be/NBwJm68FkMc?t=844)

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Economy-Tanked-Government-
Ba...](https://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Economy-Tanked-Government-
Bailouts/dp/B001UL7NY4)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-
Crashes/dp/B004...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-
Crashes/dp/B0049MEXPS)

~~~
fanzhang
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 is some amount of semantic
contorting: "well... let's define inflation this way and there is inflation...
or will be... lots of it!")

Also, current consensus, of course among mainstream economists, is that
countries that more believe the Austrian school, like Germany, has caused
unneeded pain on themselves/their neighbors by advocating of austerity versus
stimulus during downturns. If you want the mainstream steelman against the
Austrian school, you can search Paul Krugman's take on them.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
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.

~~~
jennyyang
The government changed the way they measured inflation to purposefully
downplay it. For example, if they were measuring the cost of Levi's jeans, and
they went up too high, they would replace them in their index with cheaper
non-name brand jeans to show that inflation didn't occur.

And same thing goes with groceries. When ice cream used to be a pint, it's now
14 oz. They have decreased the size of things like food packages over the last
15 years, and I don't think that's taken into consideration in the inflation
index. Recently they decreased the size of orange juice by 15% but kept the
price the same. That is the definition of inflation.

------
myth_buster
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 guess. As it all depends on how
politicians react, ie. How late they are to lockdown and how long they will be
in that state. Which perhaps is outside the realm of traditional economics.
Hence my suggestion.

~~~
barrenko
It's NOT a black swan event.

~~~
paganel
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.

~~~
dlp211
Black Swan events are unknown unknowns. White swan events are known unknowns.
Pandemics are White Swan events.

~~~
genidoi
So by your reasoning, a large asteroid discovered to hit earth a month from
now would be a white swan event, because we always knew it could happen.

~~~
AQuantized
An asteroid is definitionally a Grey Swan. Very unlikely to happen, and of
great impact, but still considered possible.
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-
swan.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-swan.asp)

COVID-19s impact wasn't nearly unpredictable or unprecedented enough to be
defined as a Black Swan imo. I did know many people both in real life and
online who were concerned about it before the impact, considerably different
from e.g. 2008 financial crisis.

------
ekianjo
Thomas Sowell - he has many great books about economical principles - "Basic
Economics" itself is extremely educational, and is regularly updated with
examples of recent History.

~~~
downerending
Haven't read his econ book, but really loved _Cosmic Justice_. The guy is
brilliant.

Beyond that, if you want something kind of fringe but real time, ZeroHedge is
interesting. Lots of chaff, but some of the wheat is insightful.

~~~
ekianjo
Thanks for the recommendation of Cosmic Justice, I was not aware of that book
of his. Will definitely have a look!

------
Tangokat
The markets and the economy move so fast now I prefer content which updates
very regularly. A lot of material is simply outdated.

Real vision[0] has some really good content. It's not super easily digestable
for someone not in professional finance but I think finance is just too
complicated to simplify and not lose a lot of nuance. I'm trying to learn and
have to look up a lot of stuff but it has been fun. I think they have 1 month
trial for $1. I recommend Raoul Pal's recent video "The Unfolding" as a
starting point.

I also think Macro Voices[1] podcasts are very solid. Again not very easy
content but experts in various fields help to make sense of the bigger
picture. You can choose a bit depending on what you're interested in (gold,
bitcoin, bonds etc).

It's worth noting that NOBODY knows what is really going to happen, all you
can do is try to get informed opinions and set probabilities. If you're
looking for investment advice trying to time the market or sectors, I would
stop looking. The uncertainty does not favour amateurs in my opinion.

[0][https://www.realvision.com/tv/home](https://www.realvision.com/tv/home)

[1][https://www.macrovoices.com/](https://www.macrovoices.com/)

------
DyslexicAtheist
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](https://twitter.com/nntaleb)

~~~
BaronSamedi
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.

~~~
sergiosgc
I don't mind arrogance on public personas[^] who are very good at what they
do. Think Steve Jobs arrogance. Think José Mourinho "I'm the special one" in
2004. I read it as putting your (reputational) neck on the line. "I'm so sure
of this assertion that I'm risking my reputation here.". Taleb is one such
brilliant mind.

The downside to arrogance is that it will tank your reputation if you fail.
This may be too early in History, and too politically charged to use as an
example, but think Trump.

[^] on personal interactions, though, I find arrogance a repellent trait.

~~~
barrenko
He's only arrogant to people covertly arrogant.

~~~
was8309
Sorry, are you referring to Kaleb or Trump? thanks

------
inv13
After reading through the comments, I'd like to approach from a different
angle.

Summary: you better of learning more about human behavior, and how we operate
on a daily basis then reading every book on economy.

When I heard in 2008 as a kid, that the world is in a financial crisis because
the investors are scared, I had no idea what is going in. I was like, those
people are grown man, how come they fear something they do all the time? And
why does investors mood correlates to financials? How can a grown man have a
fear of investing as an investor, it was odd at a time for me. Then I went
ahead and played outside like nothing is happening.

I've read a lot of books just about everything, like on every topics i could
get my hands on. Some of em are: Thinking, Fast and Slow, The power of habbit,
Deep Simplicity, Intelligent Investor and much more, not exclusively from
hackernewsbooks.com.[0]

I always arrived at the conclusion of the market is eventually run by
people(no shit). At some point in time people come up with the idea of having
a stock exchange or whatever you want to call it. Without people it would be
non-functional, non-existent. So if you want to know about the working of
market, you better of reading about humans, human mind. What drives us, why we
do things, fears, and so much more. And the best thing about this is that you
can see for yourself, it feels I am doing a research, but on myself. There is
not a single silver bullet in this topics of course, but one book I most often
hear is Thinking, Fast and Slow, mentioned before, its really worth to read
it!

Sometimes its driven by fear, like right now. In 2008 it was greed (yeah its
usually not just one thing, but you get the idea). So at the why and how, I
usually end up with human behavior. And since you cant determine what someone
is going to do, feel or think, you cant really tell what is going to happened
next, or in the future. But after reading more and more about humans, it gets
a little bit clearer as you read more books and connect the dots. And you are
going to experience everything for yourself. You can be your own research
subject. The past couple of years I've been doing that and I really enjoying
it.

[0]: [https://hackernewsbooks.com/book/thinking-fast-and-
slow/8e66...](https://hackernewsbooks.com/book/thinking-fast-and-
slow/8e66163f2bbc9e7ea1eb12ab7299a7d2)

------
RobertoG
We will never agree in what makes sense explaining economy because it's a
political question. The first thing to do, in my opinion, is to accept that.

For me, personally, after trying to make sense for a while using the
mainstream narrative, the only thing that worked was Modern Monetary Theory.
Their explanation of the banking system is based in how it really works
(mainstream textbooks don't), the sectoral balances framework (1) gives you a
tool to think in terms of aggregate demand and their theory explain things
that mainstream have problems with (like public debt ratios and inflation and
interest rates relationships). There is a textbook available(2).

1.-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances)
2.-
[http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?page_id=33139](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?page_id=33139)

------
eel
I'm keeping an eye on initial jobless claims and BLS unemployment statistics.
I'm concerned that it's a cascading effort as fewer workers means less
spending means less earnings means fewer workers and the cycle continues.
Obviously the government has levers to try to ease the pain (lower interest
rates, pass stimulus bills), but it's not yet clear how sufficient these
levers will be.

~~~
mrleinad
Yeah, that's a recession. But we'll probably see a lot of helicopter money
going forward, and some sort of global New Deal in many countries after the
virus is gone.

------
calahad
Capital and Ideology - Piketty

very approachable for an intimidatingly huge book

------
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.

~~~
GavinMcG
This isn't an answer to the question.

------
tareqak
I’ve only read the odd HN posts and AP news articles. That being said, there
might be interesting things on these places that were part of an article about
how more and more people were resorting to getting financial advice from
online sources.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/)

Oh, this was the article [https://qz.com/1707479/reddit-has-become-a-guide-to-
personal...](https://qz.com/1707479/reddit-has-become-a-guide-to-personal-
finance/)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22478854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22478854)).

Then there are the recent HN posts to Lyn Alden’s work:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lynalden.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lynalden.com)
.

------
BenoitEssiambre
Always read David Beckworth:
[https://www.davidbeckworth.com/popular](https://www.davidbeckworth.com/popular)
,[https://twitter.com/DavidBeckworth](https://twitter.com/DavidBeckworth)

Nick Rowe:
[https://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/nic...](https://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/nick-
rowe/) , [https://twitter.com/MacRoweNick](https://twitter.com/MacRoweNick)

Scott Sumner:
[https://www.econlib.org/author/ssumner/](https://www.econlib.org/author/ssumner/)
[https://twitter.com/MoneyIllusion](https://twitter.com/MoneyIllusion)

Maybe, Antonios Fatas:
[https://twitter.com/AntonioFatas](https://twitter.com/AntonioFatas)

And Also Maybe Sam Bell:
[https://twitter.com/sam_a_bell](https://twitter.com/sam_a_bell)

~~~
eru
Matt Levine's Money Stuff is also helpful and usually entertaining.

------
SigmundA
Not having much luck myself, I don't think anyone knows how to make sense of
it. Its either going to be worse than the great depression or no big deal.

Have been scanning HN a lot for anything related to the economy and found
little except for this post.

~~~
rjtavares
At this point I don't think anyone credible believes it will be no big deal.

------
scorecard
A big shout out for "Good Economics for Hard Times", by two MIT profs who
recently won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Why did two academic Economists who
specialize in the developing world write a book for the general public? From
the book's preface: "We got tired of watching at a distance while the public
conversation about core economic issues - immigration, trade, growth,
inequality, or the environment - goes more and more out of kilter. ... Also
... as we thought about it, we realized the problems facing the rich countries
in the world were actually eerily familiar to those we are used to studying in
the developing world - people left behind by development, ballooning
inequality, lack of faith in government, fractured societies and polity, and
so on."

------
dudeinjapan
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American
Dream by Hunter S. Thompson

------
mempko
This website from Ray Dalio is excellent.
[https://economicprinciples.org/](https://economicprinciples.org/)

Read Debt the first 5000 years from David Graeber.

Read Money in the Modern Economy from the Bank of England.
[https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bankofengland.co.uk...](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-
bulletin/2014/q1/money-in-the-modern-economy-an-
introduction&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjd46nn6ufoAhUHvJ4KHSo-
BjMQFjAAegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw3dYvxxGs_C7rcXWYBjP3Cp)

Why these? You have to understand money and credit. Economics ignores money
and credit which would be like physics ignoring atoms and gravity.

------
asar
I personally really like The Economist to get a good sense of what's going on
globally.

~~~
rjtavares
I agree, though readers should be aware of their bias towards free-markets,
liberal democracies and globalization.

~~~
lovemenot
What you said is broadly right, but it's always nuanced.

Yesterday they disavowed economists who are apologists for price-gouging on
life-essential goods, such as masks, whose production cannot quickly respond
to pricing signals.

~~~
tfigment
I disagree that it's nuanced, it's very blatant. Listen to coverage involving
Bernie Sanders before he dropped out to hear it. But as long as you realize
it, it can still be informative.

------
vincentmarle
I’ve studied Economics. It took me a while to realize that it’s far from a
deterministic science despite all the fancy math and models (my first clue
should have been that it’s in the department of “Social Sciences”, doh!). I
wish more of my time was spent learning chaos theory, probability, and systems
thinking, rather than solving Lagrange multipliers by hand. I have learned a
lot more from reading Nassim Taleb’s books than I ever did in those years in
college. So if you want to make sense of the economy, start with learning how
much of it _doesn’t_ make sense. Start with Nassim Taleb’s books (any book of
The Incerto will suffice).

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _my first clue should have been that it’s in the department of “Social
> Sciences”, doh!_

Because judging a subject based on it's faculty classification is oh-so-
scientific. Economics is a scientific study of social phenomenon; where else
would you like it to be placed?

------
elamje
The Fed gets a lot of hate, and heck, even economists get a lot of hate, but a
good place to start learning about macroeconomics is by understanding what the
Fed is doing and why they are doing it. The Age of Turbulence and the Courage
to Act are autobiographies written by two former Fed Chairmen, which is the
highest rank in the Fed. Greenspan and Bernanke likely get negative publicity,
but they wrote books for the layman to understand their decisions. The Courage
to Act goes into detail about what Bernanke and co did during the Great
Recession and at least gives you context for the decisions which can help you
determine if what they did was for “Wall Street”, “Main Street” or everyone.

You’ll likely be surprised at what facilities are at the disposal of this
pseudo public institution, and it’s certainly interesting. The Fed collects
inordinate amounts of data from each of its branches, and in times of crisis,
as the books elaborate on, it seems they mostly go off the cuff with custom
solutions to large scale solutions. Anyways, it helped me understand the US
economy better. Greenspan’s book has more info on global policies.

------
lootsauce
Best 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/](https://www.macrovoices.com/) [1]
[https://www.realvision.com/](https://www.realvision.com/)

------
fallingfrog
Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber. It’s a fantastic piece that takes
a step back from the present moment and asks how the economic debt system
developed and how other people in other times have done things.

~~~
hosolmaz
+1 The first few chapters were eye opening

------
themantra514
What were the ideologies that shaped the economic systems in which we live you
ask? Welp do I have a book for you, friend:

Capital and Ideology by by Thomas Piketty

 __ _Spoiler alert_ __Since way back inequality was baked-in as a featue.

------
PKop
These twitter accounts:

[https://twitter.com/LukeGromen](https://twitter.com/LukeGromen)

[https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact](https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact)

[https://twitter.com/darenpa72](https://twitter.com/darenpa72)

blog:

[https://www.lynalden.com/](https://www.lynalden.com/)

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

~~~
koheripbal
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.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _Anyone who claims to know for certain what the impact will be, is a fool or
> a liar._

Why do you need to know for certain?

If you're trying to make money, or even just "get by", you look at
probabilities of possible outcomes and make your best guess on how to approach
the problem. A mentality of "no one knows for sure, so it's pointless" is
oddly unscientific. You only need to be "right" some of the time.

------
skanderbm
I would go through these three videos : \- Ray Dalio for one view
[https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0](https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0) \- Yanis
Varoufakis for another [https://youtu.be/zi-dXc0bKUM](https://youtu.be/zi-
dXc0bKUM) \- Charles Mackay for an ancient, wise and entertaining read :
[https://youtu.be/FxgRbnh2ouE](https://youtu.be/FxgRbnh2ouE)

~~~
kiliantics
+1 for Varoufakis, he has a very deep understanding of the system, having seen
its ugly details very close up in the eurocrisis, and he has an excellent
clarity in explaining it all

------
pHde
[https://voxeu.org/](https://voxeu.org/) for "research-based policy analysis
and commentary from leading economists".

------
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](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.

------
rojeee
Perry Mehrling - The Money View. He has a course on coursera [1]. It’s the
best explanation I’ve seen of how the economy works. It’s a bank centric view
and focuses on balance sheets for analysis. Highly recommend it.

[1] [https://www.coursera.org/lecture/money-banking/a-money-
view-...](https://www.coursera.org/lecture/money-banking/a-money-view-of-
economics-and-finance-Dd4Lq)

------
vinceguidry
Wikipedia. Just yesterday I was explaining my layman's understanding of econ,
namely that money itself is zero-sum, so the prices of goods and services
float on the free market according to how much people are willing to pay for
them.

Central banks inject money into the economy, inflating the economy, reducing
costs across the board. This acts as a wealth transfer from wealth holders to
wealth producers, by that I mean businesses.

Normal inflation happens in a healthy economy, in an unhealthy one like this
one, they dust off the lever known as QE. In a QE environment, the central
bank injects money directly into the economy by buying up government bonds and
other financial instruments.

This coupled with fractional reserve banking means that the banks can make a
whole lot more loans, flooding the system with liquidity so that money can
start moving again.

I had implied that QE increases the money supply, and so was corrected and
told that it was actually the money base that was increased. On to Wikipedia I
went to upgrade my knowledge.

There I found out that the concept of money base is referring specifically to
the amount of money banks can lend on using fractional reserve banking. So
while nominally it's referring to the amount of hard currency in circulation,
that 'in circulation' part is key, it's not just the amount of 'real' money
out there.

Economics shouldn't be mysterious, one's first stop should be Wikipedia to
understand the boring concepts. If you want to know how it got that way, the
Wikipedia articles on the history of the banking system are pretty good.

It's dry, boring stuff. But you need to know it if you want to understand how
the world works.

~~~
RobertoG
>>"This coupled with fractional reserve banking means that the banks can make
a whole lot more loans, flooding the system with liquidity so that money can
start moving again."

That's not how it works.

First, never mind how much money banks can lend, if there is nobody asking for
credit. You can't create demand for credit by QE.

Second, private banks are not limited in their capacity for creating credit by
the quantity of reserves available. If central banks are going to keep their
interest rate target they have to facilitate any demand of reserves by private
banks.

It's impossible for a Central Bank to control the quantity of money and the
interest rate, they have to choose one, and they choose the interest rate.

As I said in another post, I was totally confused about how it works until I
started to read the Modern Money Theory version of all this.

Here, explained by the Bank of England (pdf):

[https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-
bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf)

------
shanev
Khan Academy’s economics and finance videos are excellent for learning the
fundamentals.

Ray Dalio’s talks on YouTube, and his most recent TED talk are great for
context around economic downturns.

Real Vision and Anthony Pompliano’s podcast are good for deep dives into
what’s going on with a bit of an alternative take.

------
rjtavares
Some podcast recommendations:

-Freakonomics ([https://freakonomics.com/](https://freakonomics.com/)) has been making some good episodes about different aspects of the current crisis. The latest episode is about the food supply market, the one before is about the $2 trillion aid package.

-Planet Money ([https://www.npr.org/sections/money/](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/)), which was created in 2008 to help make sense of the finantial crisis, is obviously focused on the crisis. Expect 20-30 minute episodes about economic topics in the news (some of the latest episodes include "The Big Small Business Rescue" and "The Economics Of Hospital Beds")

------
DennisP
Ray Dalio. Start with his articles on LinkedIn. He has a recent book if you
really want to dig in.

Dalio runs the world's largest hedge fund and it's entirely focused on
predicting what the macroeconomy will do, based on studying the last thousand
years or so of economic history.

------
brainpool
Definitely Keynes. Much of the fundamentals hasn’t made much sense earlier,
but it does now.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes)

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

~~~
RobertoG
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.

~~~
tumetab1
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.

------
blackvelvet
There's an excellent graphic novel (Economix) which gives a good broad
overview of "the economy". It's very accessible.

[https://economixcomix.com/](https://economixcomix.com/)

------
stackzero
I'm interested in pointers on this in general, not just wrt the current
climate.

------
tigerlily
FWIW, if you're in New Zealand you can follow economic news updates from
www.interest.co.nz.

It's an impressive aggregation of data and journalism. But boy could their
site do with some improvement... Could be some work in it?

There's a comments section under every article, and a motley community of
dedicated "common 'taters". Plenty of workers, business owners, property
darklords, doomers, prospective first home buyers, trolls, and even a few wise
farmers. I find it helpful to guage the vibe of what is happening on the
ground. Deep down, I think what's really needed is a forum.

------
jcroll
Economics Explained on youtube
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4AMrDcNrfy3X6nsU8-rPg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4AMrDcNrfy3X6nsU8-rPg)

------
tmaly
I have really enjoyed simple economics texts.

I highly recommend Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It is a very
approachable book that can be read in one sitting.

It illustrates the seen and unseen effects of action from Frédéric Bastiat.

------
econcon
I read many books and came to realization that I don't understand how economy
around me is going to turnout. Yes, I know few things about economy but
whatever I know has no predictive power.

So I kept it aside, I bought a piece of land and now I setup hydro and solar
pvs, to generate my own power.

I am growing my own food (mostly potatoes, tomatoes, beans, raising few hens
for eggs) and I've shelter, that's pretty much all I need.

So now I don't care about economy going down or smth, yes I might lose money
which is in economy but it isn't going to affect my livelihood.

------
DrNuke
You may want to have a look at five world-leading, freely available general
references (from World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Merryll Lynch,
United Nations and Deutsche Bank... look for their latest updates following
this crisis), which I used as an intro for my recent booklet about Economy
[https://www.tenproblems.com/2020/02/24/ten-problems-for-
econ...](https://www.tenproblems.com/2020/02/24/ten-problems-for-economy-in-
the-2020s/)

------
wernst
Many are plugging books here, so I will plug: The Money Problem by Morgan
Ricks

It provides a solid overview of different views of what is money, what is
banking, and in what ways does the financial system impact the real economy? -
These are all contested points in economics.

He goes on to lay out a different design to a monetary system, that he
believes resolves the main fragility in our current system - panics on short
term debt. It's a good read for someone who enjoys system design as much as
they do financial/monetary economics.

------
sauwan
A very interesting one that's helped me understand a lot right now is Goliath
by Matt Stoller. He frames todays economy in a similar light as the 1920s.
Very compelling and interesting.

------
mrleinad
Living in Argentina, the political landscape has far more impact on the
economy than in most other countries.

What I read here are:

\- Newspaper titles (only read the content if something is really interesting)

\- Twitter, following a few key people, both with a political and economical
background

\- Discuss with friends about economy topics

I know there's much noise in all that, but same as with politics, I don't
think you'll be able to fully make sense of the economy unless you dive deep
into it for many years, and even then you'll only get a partial view on many
things.

------
rocco337
Capital - Piketty

------
yodsanklai
For general principles, I recommend

[https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Economics-7th-Gregory-
Mank...](https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Economics-7th-Gregory-
Mankiw/dp/128516587X)

I started with vulgarisation but it didn't lead me very far. This is a
reference textbook used by economics students around the world. It's
surprisingly entertaining and teaches you the basic concepts of macro and
micro economics.

------
activatedgeek
I have been reading A Farewell to Alms - Brief History of Economics [1].
Largely answers questions around why Industrial revolution happened when it
did despite all the institutions existing well before that.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-
Prince...](https://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-
Princeton/dp/0691141282)

------
seymore_12
Right now I enjoy reading The Coming Plague [https://www.amazon.com/Coming-
Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balan...](https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-
Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913) Written 1995, but incredibly actual.
Shows that most of epidemics are function of political will and economy and
vice versa.

------
snow_mac
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

~~~
sfj
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.

~~~
dahdum
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.

------
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"

------
Jedd
John 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...](https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/the-collapse-of-
globalism/)

~~~
eru
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 more, even if we haven't solved
them, yet.

~~~
zabana
> Most of these don't look so intractable any more, even if we haven't solved
> them, yet.

who's we ?

~~~
eru
Humanity.

------
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.

~~~
texasbigdata
Kindle?

~~~
axegon_
Not available there I'm afraid.

------
m0llusk
Start with some basic reading such as Mandelbrot's Misbehavior of Markets and
Taleb's books, then move on to articles and recent video interviews with
Nouriel Roubini, Raoul Pal, and Neil Howe, and finally be sure to take in some
modern thinking from the likes of Venkatesh Rao at RibbonFarm.

------
aazaa
Everything Lyn Alden has written:

[https://www.lynalden.com](https://www.lynalden.com)

------
Kaibeezy
The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back -
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/09/unemployment-
coronaviru...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/09/unemployment-coronavirus-
pandemic-normal-economy-is-never-coming-back/)

~~~
tareqak
Posted on HN under
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22857491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22857491)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839462)
.

------
ckrusk
I really enjoy reading Matt Levine on Bloomberg.
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-
s-levine)

------
scorecard
The Economy, a free, open access textbook crowdsourced from Econ professors
all over the world, along with the Core Covid-19 collection of teaching
materials:

[https://www.core-econ.org/](https://www.core-econ.org/)

------
neilwilson
Macroeconomics by Bill Mitchell
([https://amzn.to/2XyoTrU](https://amzn.to/2XyoTrU))

The go to text book to understand the mechanisms and mechanics behind Modern
Money Theory.

------
moandcompany
Good blogs:

[https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/](https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/)

[https://wolfstreet.com/](https://wolfstreet.com/)

------
nickysielicki
[https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-
part-3-marke...](https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-
part-3-markets/)

This blog, and this post in particular.

------
larrydag
For US economy I like to track the FRED metrics. They have good visualization
charts

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories)

------
thorwasdfasdf
RealVision - [https://www.realvision.com/](https://www.realvision.com/)

not in any way affiliated with them, i just find their content sophisticated
and interesting.

------
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Free_Trade_and_the_Secret_History_of_Capitalism)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DgfOMpmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DgfOMpmo)

Economics: The User's Guide
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/29/economics-
the-...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/29/economics-the-users-
guide-ha-joon-chang-review)

Jane Jacobs

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

------
0x8BADF00D
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-
market_hypothesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-
market_hypothesis)

------
ratsbane
Famous Financial Fiascos by John Train. It's short and entertaining. There are
only a few chapters that deal with sovereign debt, but he gets the essence of
the thing.

------
tigerlily
Here ya go:
[https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php)

------
artur_makly
Ray Dalio :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrxYhv2O3wU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrxYhv2O3wU)

------
TehShrike
Geopolitical Futures
[https://geopoliticalfutures.com/](https://geopoliticalfutures.com/)

------
ohiovr
The fed used to provide a safe environment for someone to play the music for
the game musical chairs. But now they just make their own music.

------
jressey
Moby Dick might be a place to start. A popular reading is that it is an
examination of the impossibility to understand large things.

------
frequentnapper
What I'd like to know is that is the middle class going to shrink further as a
result of the current set of events?

------
freeduck
Try looking into political betting sites.

------
bwb
Planet money and the indicator, both great podcasts that break economic data
down into the macro/micro.

------
jazzyk
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).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper)

------
threatofrain
How are people reading timing and schedule for major institutions near their
area?

------
smarri
The blogs and articles of John Kay and Niall Ferguson. The Financial Times
too.

------
ilaksh
Big Debt Crisis by Dalio. Because a lot had been happening gradually also.

------
Tycho
_Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World_ by René Girard.

------
grindgrind
Read Bloomberg? They have several excellent free e-mail newsletters.

------
AndyMcConachie
First, the usual disclaimers about 'do your own research' and all that. Also,
people come into econ for different reasons, have different focuses, and
expect different things from their news. Some people read news about the
economy because they have specific decision making responsibilty, and some
people read it because they're just curious. I'm somewhere in the middle
depending on what is specifically being talked about.

Here are some random links that I check from time to time when I have the
time.

[https://wallstreetonparade.com/](https://wallstreetonparade.com/)

[https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/)

[https://mattstoller.substack.com/](https://mattstoller.substack.com/)

And then many mainstream ones like newspaper sites and the like.

------
cynusx
I wouldn't look at economic theory to predict what will happen as economists
haven't studied economies subject to pandemics, but you can look at the
reality on the ground

1/ consumer confidence is extremely low as people are afraid of the virus and
afraid of losing their jobs

2/ businesses have seen sudden and complete revenue destruction with revenue
going down from 50% to 0% of pre-crisis; however their obligations (salaries,
servicing debt, paying suppliers) obviously are still there. The natural
instinct is to pause projects, new hiring, layoff people, stop buying things,
postpone payments to suppliers and be more aggressive in collecting invoices.

This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle purging non-essential businesses or non-
competitive businesses at a very high rate.

This will accelerate until normal people are no longer afraid to go out and
then the supply chains will restart with the businesses managed to remain
alive.

The best policy response would be to freeze the capitalist system altogether
and allow any liability due in the future to be postponed by 3 months when
entities can prove significant revenue shortfalls and implement an aggressive
government-backed temporary unemployment system for those businesses as well.

To the extent that people haven't lost their job yet, it would fix the impulse
of business owners to do this very aggressively in the necessity to balance
inbound and outbound cash and post-crisis these businesses would have similar
balance sheets as pre-crisis so life can resume quickly.

For normal people nothing would change much to the current situation (stay at
home, temporary unemployment, being afraid).

The other good policy response I have seen is to force banks to give
businesses a corona-credit and to guarantee those loans. It's less good
because it does increase the debt-load of a company which alters their balance
sheets and would have to be paid off post-crisis.

------
anoraca
100% not anonymous public comments on the internet. Having waded into the
waters of r/WallStBets and even some threads on here, there is so much
disinformation and propaganda that it's actively harmful to read it.

------
bosky101
wanted to share an offbeat method a friend shared the other day. he started
plotting the weight of the local newspaper. lesser weight meant lesser
advertisers.

------
PaulHoule
Mancur Olson: Logic of Collective action.

~~~
dredmorbius
Good book.

How so specifically?

------
pjmorris
I've followed the 'Calculated Risk' and 'Naked Capitalism' blogs since the
last crisis. On twitter I follow @MkBlyth and @nntaleb.

Disclaimer: NC is fairly leftish, but I don't consider that a flaw. I'd be
interested in learning about rightish blogs of the same depth and quality.

[0] [https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/](https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/)

[1] [https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/)

------
biolurker1
Coursera and Edx courses. IBS Univ, Rice

------
refurb
Back in 2007 I listen to Econlib podcast quite a lot. The host had some really
great guests on and did a very nice job in digging into the issues.

[https://www.econlib.org/](https://www.econlib.org/)

Yes, the host is a libertarian, but I don’t think he forces it on his
listeners. He’ll often have people on who aren’t anything close to
libertarian. He’s also quite upfront about his own biases.

I learned a ton from that podcast.

------
rz2k
Right now I am reading _The Black Death in Egypt and England: a comparative
study_ by Stuart Borsch. It compares the macroeconomic effects of the black
death in England in Egypt. The relative power of the aristocracy to control or
fail to control the supply and price of labor not only affected wages in the
short term but agricultural productivity and eventually the foundation for
industrialization and entrepreneurship.

I am only a third of the way through, but it so far seems thoroughly
researched, without the dodgy understanding of economics in many (most?)
historical nonfiction books. The only potential problem is that I _want_ to
believe that the dystopian sounding world ruled by mamluks was an economic
disaster waiting to happen, so I am wary of my reading being overly credulous.
It could be that irrigation dependent agriculture was more brittle
infrastructure, but I haven't yet had time to finish or digest the book yet.

From the introduction

England:

> In spite of the disputes over many significant issues, scholars agree about
> certain aspects of the outcome in Western Europe, particularly northwestern
> Europe. In many areas, urban and rural wages rose, land rents declined,
> grain prices dropped, agricultural output became more diversified, and
> unemployment levels decreased. Furthermore, the percentage decrease of
> agrarian and total output was less than that of the population, and per
> capita incomes rose. Overall economic recovery was largely completed by the
> year 1500. Landholding systems were transformed, and the manorial system,
> which was on the wane in some areas, collapsed in many parts of Western
> Europe, and was replaced by tenant farming or small peasant landholdings.
> Where these conclusions are accepted, they are often accepted as an
> axiomatic response to the relative scarcity of labor and the abundance of
> land that accompanied depopulation. The concessions that landlords made to
> peasants also seem to be an obvious consequence of the relative scarcity of
> rural labor.

Egypt:

> Wages dropped precipitously, land rents increased, grain prices rose,
> agricultural output became less diversified, and unemployment levels
> increased. The percentage decrease in agrarian and total output was greater
> than that of the population, and per capita incomes plummeted. The
> landholding system did not undergo a radical transformation, and the
> aristocracy was able to successfully contest the demands of scarce rural
> labor. Furthermore, economic recovery was nowhere in sight by 1500; the
> agrarian system lay in ruins, and agricultural output had declined by
> approximately sixty-eight percent.

[1] [https://smile.amazon.com/Black-Death-Egypt-England-
Comparati...](https://smile.amazon.com/Black-Death-Egypt-England-Comparative-
dp-0292706170/dp/0292706170)

------
chvid
S&p500 five year chart

------
simonh
The Economist magazine, they have a paywall but you get to read a handful of
articles for free. Many of the Covid-19 relevant articles are publicly
viewable and you can access more if you sign up for a newsletter.

[https://www.economist.com/](https://www.economist.com/)

------
minimidge
The writing on the wall

------
rv-de
reddit.com/r/collapse ... only half joking.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd recommend Collapsademic as far higher S/N.

Mod is a former /r/collapse mod. Pesimistic, but not a loon.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/collapsademic/](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapsademic/)

~~~
rv-de
I'll check it out. But I must say that the crowd on collapse is actually on
average surprisingly critical and will expose and discuss flawed information
or unfounded theories. It's not a bunch of conspiracy nuts as one might
expect.

------
owenversteeg
So there are a number of pretty funny responses in this thread, I decided to
make a list:

Marx

the Bible

Bogleheads

Newspaper titles (you read that right, not the content, titles)

"nothing, I just bought a piece of land to grow potatoes and beans"

Comparative study of the black death

Raw St. Louis Fed data

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

------
lukewrites
David Harvey’s The Enigma of Capitalism has quite a bit of explanatory power,
I think, and presents an ideology that is a bit different to the most book
suggestions on hn.

------
wernercd
1984

------
s_kilk
Marx - Capital

------
aqqTwxye
The entrails of birds.

------
_DIFIGIANO_
the bible

------
bitxbitxbitcoin
The Bitcoin Whitepaper. [1]

[1] [https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

------
icu
1\. How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes (2010) by Peter Schiff and Andrew
Schiff

2\. A Template For Understanding Big Debt Crises (2018) by Ray Dalio

3\. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand

4\. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell

------
sleepysysadmin
The boomers are retiring soon if not now. Many of them were in higher risk
investments than they should be and if they all sold their high risk and went
to low risk at once. The market crashes; that's what happened. Tons of people
want to sell.

So the governments of the world have been the ones buying.
[https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

The fed put 4 trillion on the books during the financial crisis and 10 years
later they started normalization and barely made a dent. This number should be
0. Now in a few months they've spent 2 trillion buying what nobody on the
market is buying.

How do you make sense of the market when the government is basically
preventing the crash. It's not possible to make sense right now.

We aren't seeing real market numbers. We aren't seeing real tbill rates. We
arent seeing real economic numbers like unemployment because the governments
have been hiding % under participation rate.

