Gavyn Davies's Morning Meeting Reading List

Macro blogroll for the morning meeting:

I admit that I have only belatedly realised just how much essential economic information and discussion is freely available in the blogosphere. The internet has given everyone the chance to become a journalist, and many macro economists have taken full advantage. How times have changed. When I started work as an economist in the financial markets in the 1970s, it was easy to prepare for client presentations or for the firm’s morning meetings (which even then had assumed great importance, though they normally started at the civilised hour of 9.30am). Essentially, I read three journalists in the papers on the way to work in the City: Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times, and Peter Jay and David Blake in The Times. With Martin Wolf still ensconced inside the four walls of the World Bank, that covered about 95 per cent of the questions I was likely to get at the time. Any other questions were easily dismissed as irrelevant to the markets…. Morning meetings nowadays are full of debate about macro-economic ideas, the speeches of central bankers, and the writings of academia. The blogs are pivotal. Diversity of opinion reigns. No one in the investment community is safe from the ideas of the macro thinkers…. In the list below, I have selected only a small sample of the total universe of economics blogs, focusing exclusively on those that cover my particular subject…. I have tried not to choose personal favourites…. I have excluded many other great blogs for no reason other than the need for brevity…. In no particular order… the current list is:

1. Economists View – Mark Thoma http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/
2. Paul Krugman Conscience of a Liberal http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
3. Grumpy Economist – John Cochrane’s blog http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.co.uk/
4. Grabbing Reality With Both Hands – Brad DeLong http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/
5. Economics One – John Taylor http://johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.co.uk/
6. Econbrowser – Jim Hamilton and Menzie Chinn http://www.econbrowser.com/
7. Fed Watch – Tim Duy http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/
8. Confessions of a Supply Side Liberal – Miles Kimball http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/
9. Noahpinion – Noah Smith http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk/
10. J.P.Koning Blog http://jpkoning.blogspot.co.uk/
11. The Money Illusion – Scott Sumner http://www.themoneyillusion.com/
12. Uneasy Money – David Glasner http://uneasymoney.com/
13. New Monetarist Economics – Stephen Williamson http://newmonetarism.blogspot.co.uk/
14. VoxEU – Portal for the Centre for Economic Policy Research http://voxeu.org/
15. Bruegel Blog http://www.bruegel.org/blog/
16. China Financial Markets – Michael Pettis http://www.mpettis.com/
17. Key Trends in Globalisation – John Ross http://ablog.typepad.com/
18. Not the Treasury View – Jonathan Portes http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.co.uk/
19. Mainly Macro – Simon Wren Lewis http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/
20. Money Supply – FT http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/#axzz26dkdgIc3
21. Alphaville – FT http://ftalphaville.ft.com/
22. Martin Wolf’s Exchange – FT http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/#axzz26dkdgIc3
23. Free Exchange – The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange

If I were Davies, I would dump (5): John Taylor looks to me right now to be much more interested in seeking high federal office than in analyzing the world out there. I would also dump (3)--it is true that John Cochrane is no longer peddling simplistic cash-in-advance models in which nominal GDP moves proportionately (albeit perhaps with lags) with the stock of nominal money and nothing else matters, but this does not mean that he has done his homework: now he peddles simplistic fiscal-dominance models in which nominal GDP moves proportionately (albeit perhaps with lags) with the stock of nominal debt, and that is not a net improvement.

I would replace them with the nonpareil that is Marginal Revolution http://marginalrevolution.com, and with Felix Salmon http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon and Joe Weisenthal http://twitter.com/TheStalwart and Matt O'Brien http://www.theatlantic.com/matthew-obrien/...