[p2p-research] Fwd: Where does the "lost" money go ? can we find it and get it back ?

[Stan Rhodes]

Thanks Michel.  I honestly don't know of a solid, comprehensive
primer, or collection of work.  Some foundational texts exist for most
of the schools of thought, but not a lot of work builds bridges
between the schools themselves.   The basic advice is really not so
special: find where economics connects with something of interest and
importance, and pursue from there.

My research into Grameen Bank and Chris Cook's guarantee society, and
the discussions I had with folks at the money conference last year,
made me realize I needed a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of
money, credit, and economics in general.  From there, it has been, and
continues to be, a lot of reading, watching, and listening.

However one does it, it takes a lot of time and effort.  There is
plenty of material out there--Wikipedia's economics pages are a good
gateway--but there's definitely a period of just learning the
language.  I try to get diverse perspectives, particularly ones I find
initially troublesome (i.e. ones I don't initially like, and feel
tempted to dismiss).

Perspectives we don't like may be supported by evidence, even though
we want to insist that WE are the ones being rational, not them.  If a
perspective explains some evidence well, then there is value in
exploring that perspective.

In that vein, recently I've found a lot of value in listening to
Econtalk, which is a podcast done by Russ Roberts:
http://www.econtalk.org/  It's biased in some significant and
noticeable ways, which has irritated me on more than one occasion, but
overall the guests are diverse and present a lot of interesting
problems and viewpoints.  Clay Shirky was on it, for example.
Econtalk also has thorough podcast summaries and resources for each
cast.

Also, all Nobel prize economics lectures and articles from 2000 or so
on are free to view at the Nobel site.  That's probably a bit hardcore
for most, but some of them are fascinating.

-- Stan

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 1:03 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks a lot Stan, I can see that you really studied hard and that you do
> have a skill to explain complex problems to the non-initiated ..
>
> I understand now that estimated value of assets does not equate really spend
> money ...
>
> how would you advise people to study the economy, starting from scratch? how
> did you do it?
>
> Michel