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whiteknightrises · 05-12-2016 11:04 PM

Does anyone know of any good sites/resources to read up on economics?

Recently, I got into Captain Capitalism, who has some decent commentary on issues like the U.S. becoming socialist (with statistics/graphs to back it up), the economics of choosing different degrees in school, etc. That is, a lot of things that wouldn't necessarily be covered in publications like The Economist or WSJ

Is there anything like that out there minus the negativity and complaining about girls?

Thank you~

philosophical_recovery · 05-12-2016 11:08 PM

I suggest Henry Hazlitt's: Economics in One Lesson

That lays down the fundamentals.

Afterwards, there are plenty of books on deep theory, from the very dense Austrian school, like Human Action by Von Mises, to studying up on the history of what was taught in the 20th century, including Keynes.

Edit:

If you're interested in things like digital currency, I suggest reading J. Orlin Grabbe's End of Ordinary Money

Alsos · 05-12-2016 11:43 PM

Basic stuff?

I, Pencil is useful.

As is "Political Economy for Beginners" by Millicent Garrett Fawcett - written as a primer for high schoolers in the 1860s. On the one hand it's a little dated, on the other hand, it's solid on the fundamentals and isn't polluted by Marxism or subsequent junk economics. If you had the usual macro/micro in high school and/or college, her approach will seem totally different, like learning a language via immersion instead of memorizing phrases without learning the grammar or vocabulary.

"Economics in One Lesson" gets a lot of respectable recommendations, but it didn't stick in my mind at all. I'd just read Bastiat's "The Law", which covers much of the same ground, so that could be why. Bastiat's feisty. More fun to read. You'd benefit from either, really.

I'm drawn to the philosophy of economics more than the mechanics. "The Road to Serfdom" is a worthwhile read, and there are a number of economic histories like "Forgotten Man" and "Empire of Wealth" that are instructive.

Glaucon · 05-12-2016 11:48 PM

Martin Armstrong's blog
adam smith wealth of nations

Sweet Jones · 05-13-2016 12:14 AM

Go to mises.org. Lot of free books up there

The Beast1 · 05-13-2016 01:12 AM

I like Martin's blog and his analysis on cycles. However, his attempts to predict what will happen later on because of said cycles tend to be way off.

You only only really predict the cause of a cycle as it gets closer to the eventual day they're supposed to hit. The best analogy I have is an earth quake. The actual quake is the event, but the forces of pressure building up unseen are the cycle. Swap these out for economics, trust, capital flows, etc and the outcome changes to the real world. Fun fact: this is what astrology is.

Cycles are like road signs saying "NYC Ahead 5 miles". You know a city is there but not exactly what is in it. A turning point will tell you something will happen that day, but not exactly what nor the outcomes of it later on.

Between that, acting like an "I told you so Oracle" , and then write blog posts with 2nd grade grammar mistakes his blog gets a little hard to handle. Not to mention the constant, "My info is free to use! Oh read my 2016 Metals Report for 250$"

He sometimes reminds me of those penny stock guys who make people sign up to get their "stock alerts". Except he charges way more with the added, "I was jailed because my ideas are too dangerous" spiel.

Take it with a grain of salt.

Valkyrie · 05-13-2016 01:57 AM

http://www.economicprinciples.org
It is a 280 page introduction that was written by Ray Dalio (hedge fund guy) about why countries succeed and fail. It is easy to read and I found it highly interesting because it goes into some details most standard introductions of economics don't. Yes, it is monothematic but I consider the knowledge very practical. If you're too lazy to read it, there's a 30-minute video that explains the most important aspects.

Easy_C · 05-13-2016 04:23 PM

(05-13-2016 01:12 AM)The Beast1 Wrote: I like Martin's blog and his analysis on cycles. However, his attempts to predict what will happen later on because of said cycles tend to be way off.

You only only really predict the cause of a cycle as it gets closer to the eventual day they're supposed to hit. The best analogy I have is an earth quake. The actual quake is the event, but the forces of pressure building up unseen are the cycle. Swap these out for economics, trust, capital flows, etc and the outcome changes to the real world. Fun fact: this is what astrology is.

Cycles are like road signs saying "NYC Ahead 5 miles". You know a city is there but not exactly what is in it. A turning point will tell you something will happen that day, but not exactly what nor the outcomes of it later on.

Between that, acting like an "I told you so Oracle" , and then write blog posts with 2nd grade grammar mistakes his blog gets a little hard to handle. Not to mention the constant, "My info is free to use! Oh read my 2016 Metals Report for 250$"

He sometimes reminds me of those penny stock guys who make people sign up to get their "stock alerts". Except he charges way more with the added, "I was jailed because my ideas are too dangerous" spiel.

Take it with a grain of salt.

Except the guy's not entirely kidding, he does have a lot of high level connections. To me he's more interesting for that as he is for his forecasting. Interestingly enough his political forecasts tend to be off, but his market forecasts are not. He correctly called the drop in gold, and in January was calling for the stock market to rebound strongly around the mid April timeframe.

He wasn't jailed because his ideas were too dangerous. It's not entirely clear why, but it stemmed from some shadiness regarding HSBC, Goldman Sachs, and Edmond Saffra.

If you want good trading ideas he's a goldmine...and it's worth noting that Socrates is far more useful than his blog is.

The Beast1 · 05-14-2016 04:49 AM

(05-13-2016 04:23 PM)Easy_C Wrote:
(05-13-2016 01:12 AM)The Beast1 Wrote: I like Martin's blog and his analysis on cycles. However, his attempts to predict what will happen later on because of said cycles tend to be way off.

You only only really predict the cause of a cycle as it gets closer to the eventual day they're supposed to hit. The best analogy I have is an earth quake. The actual quake is the event, but the forces of pressure building up unseen are the cycle. Swap these out for economics, trust, capital flows, etc and the outcome changes to the real world. Fun fact: this is what astrology is.

Cycles are like road signs saying "NYC Ahead 5 miles". You know a city is there but not exactly what is in it. A turning point will tell you something will happen that day, but not exactly what nor the outcomes of it later on.

Between that, acting like an "I told you so Oracle" , and then write blog posts with 2nd grade grammar mistakes his blog gets a little hard to handle. Not to mention the constant, "My info is free to use! Oh read my 2016 Metals Report for 250$"

He sometimes reminds me of those penny stock guys who make people sign up to get their "stock alerts". Except he charges way more with the added, "I was jailed because my ideas are too dangerous" spiel.

Take it with a grain of salt.

Except the guy's not entirely kidding, he does have a lot of high level connections. To me he's more interesting for that as he is for his forecasting. Interestingly enough his political forecasts tend to be off, but his market forecasts are not. He correctly called the drop in gold, and in January was calling for the stock market to rebound strongly around the mid April timeframe.

He wasn't jailed because his ideas were too dangerous. It's not entirely clear why, but it stemmed from some shadiness regarding HSBC, Goldman Sachs, and Edmond Saffra.

If you want good trading ideas he's a goldmine...and it's worth noting that Socrates is far more useful than his blog is.

I know and i can definitely see that. The annoying part though is all of the good info is locked up behind a paywall and the half baked political stuff is out for all to see. A man's allowed to make money, but it just comes off poorly when he says, "this stuff is free for all to use and seek out!" Not quite.

I'm still waiting for the trader level service which was supposed to be out in Q1. We're well into Q2 now with him peddling his 2k$ conference tickets.

Easy, have you attended his conferences? What were they like if you did? Care to share some of what Socarates trader level can really do?

~~NASA Test Pilot~~ · 05-15-2016 01:41 AM

Martin Armstrong was initially jailed based on contempt of court. He spent his first 7 years in jail because he would not give away his arrays (they said they wanted the computers publically, but they were after the software inside; the gold bars and antiques were used to distract the public) at a time when his modeling work was some of the most powerful for a non-government entity on the planet. He was facing charges for fraud by the SEC and CFTC (directed from a Japanese investigation). He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and spent another 5 years in prison. The original Judge (of the kangaroo court) was removed from the case (after a number of years) and a plea bargain was reached.

Martin is well connected (to include senior members of inner circles of prominent world leaders (political and financial). Understanding his plea bargain is one of the keys to understanding the limitations of what he posts and how he phrases his words. I suggest that he is not telling the world all that he actually believes and knows as that would negate part of the plea bargain and put him at risk.

I think another Forum member here knows him as well.

~~NASA Test Pilot~~ · 05-15-2016 01:51 AM

Peregrine · 05-16-2016 10:02 PM

In addition to what was already posted, I'm currently working on Dalio's Economics Principles. Good so far.

http://www.economicprinciples.org/wp-con...agings.pdf

Kissinger2014 · 05-16-2016 10:59 PM

Probably a little to the left for most people on this forum, but I enjoy checking out Tyler Cowen's 'Marginal Revolution' : http://marginalrevolution.com/

He has links to more than just economics; but also culture, food, technology. He is an economics professor at George Mason.

GillesDeleuze · 05-17-2016 06:40 AM

I would stay away from neoclassical authors who inspired austerity economic policies adopted in the eurozone last years

Their doctrine is based on some false assumptions, such as ''inflation must be kept under 2%'' ''too high debt is a problem'' , while actually there is deflation and unemployment has skyrocketed, due to insufficient public spending of ex sovereign countries who can't exceed the 3% ratio of Maastricht treaty

Some authors for public purpose : Keynes,Godley,Kalecki,Knapp, Randall Wray,Warren Mosler, the Modern Money Theory

Huey · 05-17-2016 08:25 AM

I'm surprised Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics hasn't been mentioned yet.

mpr · 05-17-2016 11:52 PM

Your best bet is to take a beginning Macro Economics and Micro Economics at your local community college. If you can't do that check out the book: Maco Economics by Paul Krugman. It's a college level textbook on beginning Macro Economics. You can buy the previous edition for something like: $9.00. Also the undercover economist is pretty interesting.

Easy_C · 05-18-2016 09:53 AM

Well, be careful with that. I've taken Macro Economics as a mandatory course. It's helpful because it helps you understand the terminology and ideas people refer to but I challenge you to find any of the theories or models they teach that actually work the way they expect it to in the real world.

Regarding Socrates:

I'm impressed, it's much better than Armstrong's non-finance writings. The system is an extremely powerful technical analysis program far superior to both your average day trader setup and the professional platform I used before. In particular it correctly called the major index movements throughout the spring, claiming a support line more or less where DJIA ended up and a "reversal level" immediately before the price that marked a dramatic acceleration of price(just over 17,000 if I remember correctly). For me what sets it apart from Bloomberg, Factset, et al is the emphasis on FOREX: it tracks movements in those markets and allows you to see an "at a glance" view of which countries are seeing capital inflows and outflows.

This thing would be invaluable if you're a money manager or if you make any signficant income from trading. Otherwise I wouldn't bother because it's a very specialized tool.

mpr · 05-18-2016 01:38 PM

(05-18-2016 09:53 AM)Easy_C Wrote: Well, be careful with that. I've taken Macro Economics as a mandatory course. It's helpful because it helps you understand the terminology and ideas people refer to but I challenge you to find any of the theories or models they teach that actually work the way they expect it to in the real world.

That seems like a pretty bold statement. You don't think that the basic macroeconomic: supply/demand/price/output model works in real life? I've found macroeconomic models very useful to supplement my training in finance, and they helped me predict movements in prices that I probably otherwise would have missed. As well as understand the environment that companies were operating in. Of course no model can work perfectly in all real world circumstances. You have to understand the model you're using, the limits of it's predictive power, and in what circumstances you should use it.

~~ovloV~~ · 05-18-2016 03:30 PM

(05-18-2016 01:38 PM)mpr Wrote:
(05-18-2016 09:53 AM)Easy_C Wrote: Well, be careful with that. I've taken Macro Economics as a mandatory course. It's helpful because it helps you understand the terminology and ideas people refer to but I challenge you to find any of the theories or models they teach that actually work the way they expect it to in the real world.

That seems like a pretty bold statement. You don't think that the basic macroeconomic: supply/demand/price/output model works in real life? I've found macroeconomic models very useful to supplement my training in finance, and they helped me predict movements in prices that I probably otherwise would have missed. As well as understand the environment that companies were operating in. Of course no model can work perfectly in all real world circumstances. You have to understand the model you're using, the limits of it's predictive power, and in what circumstances you should use it.

A lot of this depends on the institution you go to. Some schools go very light on the math with their econ students, and as such, you get some worthless theories.

This leads to me to an important point to make: economics is very math intensive. Be wary of anything that tries to teach economics without the use of lots of math. Things that are boiled down to seemingly accurate statements without empirical methods to back them up should be scrutinized heavily. It's why Austrian Economics is not mainstream in academia. Everything they say sounds nice, but unless you can prove it mathematically, be skeptical.

EDantes · 05-19-2016 10:19 AM

A book called "The Instant Economist" I'm reading seems like a good starting point for understanding the basis without going into all of the ideologies.

WeekendCasanova · 05-19-2016 02:01 PM

(05-18-2016 09:53 AM)Easy_C Wrote: Well, be careful with that. I've taken Macro Economics as a mandatory course. It's helpful because it helps you understand the terminology and ideas people refer to but I challenge you to find any of the theories or models they teach that actually work the way they expect it to in the real world.

A very facile statement. How many econ courses did you take? I'm curious.

Advanced-Macro/Micro courses teach you theories/strategies that are being used today. What they then ask you to do, is to expand on those theories and develop your own pragmatic approach to solving the issues that economies face. Econ courses in the latter years of University teach theory, as well as mathematical concepts that are pillars in your understanding of Economics. Obviously each Uni is different, but in general this is the approach. You took intro courses it seems, which are only one layer; the basics. Start with intro, and go from there.

I'd completely ignore micro econ; it's completely useless. Only purpose of micro is academic. Macro on the other hand has a ton of applications that can help whether you're in finance, economics, or general business.

Gideon Griffin · 05-19-2016 02:25 PM

I second the recommendation for the Austrian school, expressed above with a recommendation for Mises.org, the works of Murray Rothbard, and others.

However, for the layman, this may be a bit overwhelming. It leaves one with a "holy cow, where do I start?" sort of feeling.

I suggest that first, you start with this short video, "Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem.

I can feel you experienced scholars cringing at the very idea. But hear me... or rather IT out. The producers did a remarkable job at highlighting the differences between Keynsian vs Austrian thought:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

Second, pick up a copy of "Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School" by Gene Callahan.

It's fairly short (about 350 pages), well written, and interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479220809

Once you get through these, you'll have a better grasp of real economics than most College graduates, and can then decide which of the more challenging tomes piques your interest.

WeekendCasanova · 05-19-2016 02:32 PM

(05-19-2016 02:25 PM)Gideon Griffin Wrote: I second the recommendation for the Austrian school, expressed above with a recommendation for Mises.org, the works of Murray Rothbard, and others.

However, for the layman, this may be a bit overwhelming. It leaves one with a "holy cow, where do I start?" sort of feeling.

I suggest that first, you start with this short video, "Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem.

I can feel you experienced scholars cringing at the very idea. But hear me... or rather IT out. The producers did a remarkable job at highlighting the differences between Keynsian vs Austrian thought:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

Second, pick up a copy of "Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School" by Gene Callahan.

It's fairly short (about 350 pages), well written, and interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479220809

Once you get through these, you'll have a better grasp of real economics than most College graduates, and can then decide which of the more challenging tomes piques your interest.

Reading on the Austrian school is required reading in third year for most economics student, and your claim that reading the above will leave you with a better grasp of real economics than most college graduates is delusional. It's pure conjecture.

I'd also like to add that Keynsian theory is pretty much completely discredited in Universities right now. It's taught as an example of how things can go wrong when theories don't adapt and change as fast as economies change.

I full recommend reading any book you can on economics. Research different views - never pick just one. Even the Austrian school had its flaws, which is what makes economics so interesting.

Gideon Griffin · 05-19-2016 02:51 PM

(05-19-2016 02:32 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote: Reading on the Austrian school is required reading in third year for most economics student, and your claim that reading the above will leave you with a better grasp of real economics than most college graduates is delusional. It's pure conjecture.

While I don't want to get stuck on that particular claim, I would, as evidence, point to all the Bernie Sanders supporters.

Most college graduates do not have a grasp of economics, and it is better for the continued functioning of the system that they do not. How else are they to encourage their own sons and daughters to assume massive debt for worthless degrees?

And yes, it's better to read more than less. However, one should learn the truth first. Which is why I stand by my recommendation for the Austrian School, introduced by Callahan's book.

Afterward, read "The Worldly Philosphers" by Robert Heilbroner. It won't help your understanding of economics, but it will introduce you to the authors that have shaped economic thought over the last several centuries.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486214X

WeekendCasanova · 05-19-2016 02:54 PM

(05-19-2016 02:51 PM)Gideon Griffin Wrote:
(05-19-2016 02:32 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote: Reading on the Austrian school is required reading in third year for most economics student, and your claim that reading the above will leave you with a better grasp of real economics than most college graduates is delusional. It's pure conjecture.

While I don't want to get stuck on that particular claim, I would, as evidence, point to all the Bernie Sanders supporters.

Most college graduates do not have a grasp of economics, and it is better for the continued functioning of the system that they do not. How else are they to encourage their own sons and daughters to assume massive debt for worthless degrees?

And yes, it's better to read more than less. However, one should learn the truth first. Which is why I stand by my recommendation for the Austrian School, introduced by Callahan's book.

Afterward, read "The Worldly Philosphers" by Robert Heilbroner. It won't help your understanding of economics, but it will introduce you to the authors that have shaped economic thought over the last several centuries.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486214X

I don't know why you would say 'college grads' then, as this is an economics thread. The average college student takes maybe one economics course in their entire life. Read a book on psychology and you'll know more than the average college grad; it's not a spectacular feat.

I assumed that by college grad you meant economics major; which you clearly didn't. My bad!

- WC

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