Econo-wonking ain't easy.

Brief, and entirely weird thought regarding econo-blogging:

I am not an economist, nor do I play one on t.v. I don't even really balance my check-book except in a vague and haphazard way where I kind of "know" how much money I have and how much I can spend. As I've posted earlier, I think a lot of the ideas thrown about regarding the kind of "Ayn Rand", "Greed is good", yadda yadda yadda, version of right-wing economics are inherently self-destructive. But I'm not, actually, opposed to economics--as a science. I think there are good theories--and those would be the ones that work in practice. But on the whole, there's a part of me that actually, even with my same level of "you know I'm just a regular Jane Q Public without specialized knowledge" working for me, feels more comfortable expanding upon what I think about the "Overseas Contigency Operations", than I do about economics.




It doesn't help that I've read Paul Krugman's NYT column nearly religiously the past several years. I've read his The Conscience of a Liberal not long ago, and found it really a compelling read, for drawing out why anyone would be a liberal: because, in principle, it's right, and because in practice, it works. There's no personal, "come to liberal Jesus" moment there. It's just very sensible.

There's a part of me though, that wonders if "just very sensible" is enough. Should I cram Stiglitz and Galbraith now, and catch up to where I'm comfortable talking about whether pricing issues are "sticky" and how that impacts the Geithner plan in that the market has to value assets already determined to be "toxic" in a realistic role-playing game called, "gambling with house money" ? Or should I sit this conversation out because even though I have some definite ideas about money and how we use it, etc, I'm just not an expert, and I might completely CNBC the whole thing?

I dunno. "I dunno" is the whole gist of this post.