HACKER Q&A
📣 skwee357

I have no idea about world economics. How I can fix that?


I'd like to understand more about the world economics and finance. General news websites are pretty dull and panic based.

Are there any good blogs / newsletter that talk about the economics / finance events in the world, with good (non panic) analysis?

Thanks!


  👤 Mikeb85 Accepted Answer ✓
Macroeconomics and financial economics textbooks. There's a lot of terrible information out there and tons of conspiracy theories.

As far as websites, honestly I'd say Bloomberg. Or follow some bank economists on Twitter (I find they're the most honest as banks are motivated primarily by being correct as opposed to motivated by politics).


👤 admissionsguy
Whatever textbooks economics/finance freshmen at good universities use these days. "Learning" from blogs, or worse, current event reports, without background knowledge is.. highly suboptimal.

👤 f0e4c2f7
I went down a similar road with curiosity and little prior knowledge.

I'll say some of the best resources I found were macroeconomic textbooks on specific economic subjects.

For example I really enjoyed this one for understanding how the fed and the central banking system works broadly.

https://www.amazon.com/Central-Banking-Sustaining-Financial-...

At a higher level though one of the few non-textbooks I would reccomend is Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty. It's an introduction and history of many topics and an enjoyable read.

https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-P...


👤 __d
The Economist might be a good starting point? https://www.economist.com/

For a narrower focus, the Wall Street Journal (New York) and the Financial Times (London) are probably the primary English-language sources for financial news.


👤 _shadi
You can read some of the essays John Keynes wrote, still as relevant as when they were wrote, especially now with the pandemic and inflation.

even if you don't end up agreeing with his views(I do agree, and I think he is very underrated), its still a very good and eye-opening reads.

https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/keynes-essaysinpersuasion/ke...


👤 keiferski
The news site of Tyler Cowen, a well-known economist: https://marginalrevolution.com

The Financial Times is generally considered the most "professional" newspaper for finance/business. A bit pricey, though: https://www.ft.com


👤 aucls
Most news websites try to get more access to click bait or sell the most "hot" info via subscriptions.

To get more knowledge in world economics in economics/finance in general i suggest to look for videos/books that explain the economy in the past and the rational behind it.


👤 2143
Try reading Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo.

It won't make you an expert, but atleast it's a start.

The authors are Nobel laureates in Economics, so they probably know what they're talking about.


👤 altdataseller
Whats your purpose?

If you want to gain an academic understanding, then mises.org is a good resource(though some ppl are against it)

If you want to make money from stocks, then understanding economics will not help you, sorry to say


👤 toomuchtodo
Highly recommend https://www.lynalden.com/

👤 aristofun
Let me leave here sarcastic yet truthful note, directly answering the fist sentence of the title:

Nobody has!

:)


👤 dgb23
Maybe slightly off topic, but economics have philosophical underpinnings that are worth studying.

A a very rough, very incomplete chronological list: Smith, Marx, Keynes, Friedman, Hayek, Piketty.

Big Thinkers have thought deeply and thoroughly about this topic and have a surprisingly strong influence on what happens in the grand scheme of things. They have conflicting ideas and political stances. But still, you'll find quite a bit of truth in what they say, because you can literally observe some of their predictions, but you have to kind of mix and match them.

Both economics and finance are still Black Arts in my opinion. You'll find a ton of math and studies but it is all very much mixed with politics, paradigms, huge assumptions and inconsistency. It is an incredibly complex subject matter, and there are quite a few people who want to make us believe that they've figured it out, but in essence it is all about social interactions and any model that tries to boil human behavior down to something simple, rational and well understood is doomed.


👤 ptmvp
I've tried to restrict the suggestions below to sources that I perceive as fairly unbiased.

While it's not exclusively focused on the economics side of things, one recommendation I would have is to read "The World: A Brief Introduction", by Richard Haass.

On the Financial side of things, the Financial Times is probably the best publication for what you're after.

On YouTube I'd recommend tldr news for current news and Caspian Report for geopolitics.


👤 matt_s
Whats the joke? If you spend 13 minutes learning about macro/world economics you've wasted 10 minutes of your time.

Its a "system" that includes human behavior so it can't be reduced down into logical workflows with known inputs and outputs like any good engineer would like to break it down into.

I think your best bet is reading historical information about various cycles. Anything currently published will be suspect because of wanting clicks/subscribers/views (even independent sources rely on subscriptions/ads) or, at least in my eyes, will be suspect because the Internet is the best mis-information distribution system humans have ever seen.