

Crowd-sourcing the monitoring of the world economy - hopeless_case

It is fascinating for me to watch the governments of the world stumble around in the wake of the financial crisis not knowing what to do.<p>How did this crisis sneak up on everyone?  How can we prevent the next one from sneaking up?<p>I wonder if keeping an eye on banks and government monentary policy isn't something that can be crowd sourced.<p>What sort of metrics might be useful ones to keep an eye on?
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adldesigner
Intriguing idea. A mechanism could be put in place to allow people to measure
and keep an eye out on world markets.

This does happen though. Internet has allowed for this. Websites and blogs
were for years warning about this upcoming crisis. Both the people, and the
governments chose to disregards those alarms, right until the Housing market
busted.

Unfortunately, people probably would not know what to do more than what the
governments are showing right now. I guess that's why Economy is called a
'social science'.

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hopeless_case
I am guessing that a lot of data analysis talent that used to be uninterested
in trying to understand the world economy will now be much more interested.

We've had cheap computers and cheap internet access for a while now, but we
haven't had as many people burned by the mismanagement of the world economy.

As I hear people propose what went wrong, I keep thinking,"Can I turn that
into a useful metric?"

For example, I have heard that banks make their money mostly on fees much more
than they used to, because they have become so quick to grant loans and then
sell them.

This leads to the question: at any given time, what are the various
significant ways in which banks are making money, and what is the allocation
of bank profits into each type?

Now watch those ratios for shifts (both sudden and gradual) and ask yourself
what might be going on when you notice a shift.

Does the ability to draw graphs like that currently exist?

If not, why not?

