A decent grasp of economics (beyond ‘Econ101′) has always been just beyond my reach. I keep trying to approach it from different angles (through the various paradigmatic economists, like Friedman, Keynes, Smith, etc.) but I’ve never been able to get ‘into’ it. Part of my problem is a lack of mathematics (but part of that problem is a lack of faith in mathematics)… Recently I’ve started pulling together little threads of insight, building momentum, becoming engaged with economic ideas. The current financial mess has a lot to do with it — opening things up, bringing a lot if different ideas and observations into the mainstream discussion; more importantly, it has given me faith in my lack of faith in the really rigourous stuff. Also, in the past few months I’ve become a regular reader of Marginal Revolution — soon to be regular reader of other economics blogs, I suspect — beginning to get a sense of the current professional scene. The final spark has come, of all sources, from two articles in Scientific American: The Economist Has No Clothes and The Evolving Web of Future Wealth. I don’t know where my foray into economics will lead, but at least it’s taking me somewhere… “interesting throughout.”
