Introduction

The ideas I'm planning to lay out in this blog have been floating around in my head for a while, but I haven't yet been able to put them down into print. The goal of the blog is to paint a more complete picture of our economic situation and how we got here. Many of the ideas I'll present I have seen discussed and published before and are not my own original ideas (Keynes, for example, was very influential on my thinking), but this blog will attempt to put them all together in an easy to understand narrative.

That is not to say that I will be explaining in detail credit default swaps or the housing crisis. Rather, it will be easier and more illuminating to try and look at in general terms what purpose these transactions served and what impact they had on the economy. The true problems are long term structural problems that cannot be solved easily. As a result, this blog will try to show that tough long term solutions are needed. I felt this was all the more imperative as George W. Bush and Barack Obama continue to suggest short term solutions that may actually be exacerbating the situation rather than improving it.

Initially, this blog will look more like a book and each post will serve as a chapter in that book explaining a piece of what is going on in the economy or how it should be solved. Once the book portion is finished, this blog will function more like a traditional blog where I may comment on news articles or things on the internet.

I am not a professional economist (although professional economists got us here in the first place), so I welcome feedback and will adjust my ideas if I see fit. I believe economics is the study of human behavior, so any theory should attempt to describe that behavior rather than starting with false assumptions (e.g. people are rational, people have perfect information, and markets are competitive) or previously decided ideology (laissez-faire economic policies). As humans, your feedback about human behavior should be helpful in trying to describe that behavior.

I hope you enjoy!