Three Excellent Economic Blogs

While the current economic situation has been unfolding I have been trying to understand how we got into this situation. Fortunately there are some really high quality blogs that focused on the economy and their insight from the beginning has been spot on. I would like to share the three primary blogs I read and a free newsletter from John Mauldin.

John Mauldin’s Thoughts from the Frontline

A friend referred me to John Mauldin’s weekly news letter. I found his insights and ability to simplify complex concepts into understandable language refreshing. It was here that I first learned about how this economic crisis was evolving.

In my quest to gain more understanding of what was happening and my frustration with the mainstream press’s inability to provide the detail I was craving; I started looking further into the blog world. Being a part of the financial industry I knew that there was much more to what was happening than what was currently being discussed. After finding a list of the top 10 economic blogs I discovered Mish’s Global Economic Analysis and Calculated Risk. What I liked about these two blogs is that they pull information and articles from all over the web and include their commentary.

Mish's Global Economic analysis
I have found that Mish has been accurate on most of his writings and when wrong it has been for being optimistic in his forecast. We can all understand that forecasting is really a game of best guess so I usually let these errors go. Mish does tend toward the Austrian Economic model rather than Keynesian Economics and as I watch the credit crunch begin to take its toll on the world economy I am leaning a little more toward Mish’s way of thinking.

Calculated Risk
Calculated risk is more focused on the US real estate market. This blog more often provides a wide range of articles and videos which is a good starting point for a daily dose of news.

Finally this last blog I discovered earlier this week while trying to understand why the emerging market economies were getting into financial trouble so quickly. I found Brad Setser’s Follow the Money blog

Brad Setser: Follow the Money
In this blog I quickly learned the emerging economies were borrowing in dollars because their currencies were strong against the US dollar. However, when the financial crisis really picked up speed this summer there was a flight to safety and that meant the US dollar has strengthened against many currencies. Countries need to pay their loans in US dollars and quickly depleted their dollar reserves.

Take a look at these blogs for a much better explanation of the current crisis. Cheers