Some Economics Basics
Welcome to the discipline that wants to be scientific—except when it doesn't; that professes to explain human behavior at the individual AND large-scale levels; that features a bevy of "schools" of thought that range from anarchic free marketers to complete bureaucratic control; that nearly unanimously subscribes to economic models that assume infinite sources of natural materials; that panders to politics and financial institutions through revolving-door hiring among academic institutions, Washington, and Wall Street.
I'm still far from expert on economics, but it seems that a well-rounded understanding of how we got into this mess entails familiarity with Adam Smith, The Austrian School, Keynesian economics, and other players and ideas. Beware the talking heads on mainstream media, whose bread is buttered by propping up the status quo and avoiding difficult questions.
Chris Martenson's The Crash Course: A highly recommended entry point for understanding economic (and other) factors that are changing our world forever.
John Michael Greer's 4 Nov 09 essay Harnessing Hippogriffs: An idiosyncratic choice, this short post effectively denounces "free markets will solve it all" and other black-white views.
______________________
The medieval guild system: why it worked, and ruminations about future relocalization: John Michael Greer, 18 Nov 09.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (technically, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations), 1776: For better or worse, the work that changed everything in economics, though not necessarily as Smith intended. Because the original is not particularly enjoyable or rewarding reading, most people's view of this work comes from second- ("invisible?") hand sources that generally overlook Smith's distrust of corporations and his preference for a proportional income tax and government regulation.
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944): Seminal work that elevates free-market principles to almost sacred status while viewing central planning as an abomination. The individual counts much more than the group in his estimation. Fairly tortuous text; perhaps try these instead:
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (1946, rev. 1978): Intro to free-market economics.
Gene Callahan, Economics for Real People (2002): Intro to Austrian-school economics.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936): I confess that I have not read this entire work; I would hate to be an economist. Nevertheless, many economists did read the whole thing: this hugely influential theory served as the framework for global macroeconomics in the middle third of the 20th century, and for the "new Keynesianism" of 2008–2009.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944): Ostensibly a history of economic events from the 1700s to WWII, this book features social theory and powerful ideas that aren’t found in mainstream modern economics tracts: (1) Whereas modern society is embedded in/subsumed within the economy, esp. the “market mechanism,” economies throughout earlier human history were submerged within, and served, society and social relationships. (2) The market economy treats humans as mere economic commodities who sell their labor in order to eat.
Baseline Scenario—The Financial Crisis for Beginners: Not a standard text like those above, this site is nevertheless at least as useful for understanding the modern financial crisis. What's a CDO? a credit default swap? a currency crisis? a "bad bank?" Lots of in-depth articles, links to radio and video, and more.
Evolution of the Word "Inflation:" Helpful 1997 paper from the FRB Cleveland (PDF file).
Online Economics "Textbook:" The basics in 2 pages, plus links to other a dozen other short entries that address many facets of traditional economics. Not profound or snazzy, but OK.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Wikipedia is a surprisingly good source of information on the fundamentals of economics. But then, a mainstream economics text is a mainstream economics text is a mainstream economics text.
Bretton Woods: A fine, detailed treatment of the origins, design, and disintegration of the first Bretton Woods agreement. Related link: The Triffin Dilemma
Austrian school of economics
Chicago school of economics
Keynesian economics
Supply-side economics
2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence
____________________________________________________________________________________
The current global recession/depression is the worst since the Great Depression of 1929–1930s (and may turn out to be worse). Here are good accounts of what happened back then.
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash (1954): Detailed analysis of the breakdown of the U.S. economy, but JKG's humor and incisiveness make this fun to read.
David Kennedy, Freedom From Fear (The American People in Depression and War, 1941-1945), (1999): The first half of this massive (900-page), Pulitzer Prize-winning tome analyzes the social, economic, and political developments that culminated in, and were altered by, the Great Depression in the U.S. The second half covers the U.S. role in World War II.