It's the economy, stupid...

I haven't had much to say about the current economic crisis, but I have a good excuse; I don't understand it.

Not to say that I'm dumb. The economy is frightfully complex and even the "experts" seldom agree about much. Frankly, I don't think that anyone without a degree in Economics knows enough about economics to offer intellegent comments on it. And that excludes college-dropout me.

I did, however, write one good article on the subject, back in late September when I was off-line. It was fairly intellegent and fairly insightful (if I do say so myself) and at the end I promised I'd keep updating it until I was able to post it. The problem was, things were happening just too damn fast and to damn often for me to keep that promise for long. In two days, I'd updated that article more than half a dozen times and large parts of it were no longer applicable to the crisis (after two days!) so I gave it up as a bad job and stopped.

This experience also pointed out to me just how much I didn't know about the subject, so I did me some readin'. A month later, I don't know much more than I did, not when you compare it to how much I would need to know to comment intelligently on the subject.

I was able to teach myself about the International Paper Market and what it had to do with the world financial meltdown. (Hint: It has nothing to do with buying giant rolls of newsprint or toilet paper in bulk.)

I now know that there's a difference between micro-economics and macro-economics beyond scale.

I understand how debt is bad and credit is good. I also understand how debt is good and credit is bad.

And I understand enough to know that I don't actually know anything.

I can only hope that I know enough to make an intelligent, informed opinion on whose policies will be the law of the land after November 4. I think I do...but perhaps not. Perhaps no one does, unless they've got one of those fancy degrees in Economics that I mentioned earlier; those degrees that don't stop "experts" from endlessly arguing with each other and that didn't seem to help anyone predict this mess.

All I can do, all that any of us can do, is listen carefully, ask questions, read more about it, and based on what we learn make the best choice we can.

But be warned: If you follow that advice, you may end up selecting a President by closing your eyes and going "eeny, meeny, miney, moe..."

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

(I would have posted a list of links for further reading, but I'm having a bit of trouble on the Internet today; try doing a Google search on economy (add you favorite news service) and see what you get. Good luck. -BV)