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Comment by CamelCaseName | Hacker News Reader

Where would you suggest?

I recently purchased a subscription to The Economist and have been listening to the top stories on a daily basis. That said, it seems to be more politics than economics.

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That paper's misnomer aside, you probably don't want to listen to economists to learn how economies work. The soft sciences tend to get a bad rep but economists tend to be the ones most resembling ideological fan fiction.

This is playing out currently, quite openly, as the FTC investigates whether companies have raised prices more than costs have risen from inflation. It's becoming increasingly clear that the academic economic consensus is, simply, disconnected from how markets actually operate. For instance, while each day has brought a new study of consolidated companies engaging in pandemic price gouging, academic establishment luminaries like Larry Summers continue to argue that antitrust is unrelated to inflation.

We're in a true "Emperor's new clothes" moment.

Larry Summers was 100% right about impending inflation. He’s been totally vindicated. I’m suspicious of where you are getting your information and suspect it’s politically motivated.

Actually he was a third right: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-larry-summe...

Larry Summers has been wrong numerous other times and this is pure confirmation by settling on one where he hasn't been. Broadly this is the basis for macroeconomics jumping from one "analyst" to another with the benefit of hindsight. Just look at how many diff predictors for recessions there are - the yield curve was supposed to be the best one. When a recession does occur, economists will prove to the one that was correlated to predict the next one.

It’s quite the opposite. Economics is generally the most rigorous of the social sciences.

Even the “worst” discipline, macroeconomics, tends to yield high quality predictions. Larry Summers was screaming from the rooftop about how the Covid stimulus would result in inflation

Microeconomics maybe. Macro is highly speculative since there is borderline no basis for experimentation and inference, and every incidence has no precedence. This is very broadly understood and accepted by economists themselves

Where would I suggest for you to get a real education in economics or where would I suggest you go to become another armchair economist like me? :)

Personally I'd stick with Boglehead type advice and focus on your career(assuming you're in tech). My day job is the only thing that's ever consistently generated wealth for me.

I am in a special situation having to make up for lost time being out of the market and being divorced, so I am trying riskier things that I really wouldn't recommend for anyone else.

Once you go down the rabbit hole of trying to understand macroeconomic trends and betting accordingly, well, it becomes rather distracting. I can't recommend it.

If you really want to 'go there' well... I don't know. I follow a random collection of FinTwit folks. Lately I like Doomberg and "The Maverick of Wall Street". I also follow folks like Mohamed El-Erian, Buffett/Munger and Jeremy Grantham

Haha, well, my undergrad was actually Economics and I assure you I am still an armchair economist!

Reading the annual notes / investment updates by certain more prolific managers can be useful, but they all have their own bias and honestly its not particularly insightful from an economics perspectives. (More finance than economics)

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