Summer reading for those who really want to "get it"

"

Remember That What I Don’t Know Is Much Greater Than What I Know"

Some of you know the name Ray Dalio; one of his videos (only 30 minutes long, and a great introduction to broader understanding of how everything fits together) is on your Extension Resources page on Firefly. You should also know of my fascination with cycles, some short, some long. Mr Dalio has written a piece detailing some of the work he has done to understand cycles. As one of the most sustained and successful hedge funds of all time, his firm relies on such research to understand how to allocate investment funds. For you it means he draws together strands of economic theory and ties them into economic reality, in an attempt to get the "big picture".

"I believe that the times ahead will be radically different from the times we have experienced so far in our lifetimes, though similar to many other times in history."

If you only read the introduction it should help you understand that what we are going through is part of a recurring cycle; that the economics you study is useful if you are looking at detail, but needs to be put into perspective if you really want to understand what would work in today's environment, and what you face as you stretch out into the world of work (and voting for your leaders).

The writing starts here, and how far you read is up to you. If it improves your "Big Picture" understanding, then it will help you put together macroeconomic theory effectively. This could be the part that gets you to an A*. If you have aspirations to achieve an A, but are worried about getting there, just reading the introduction will provide a good pathway to better essays.

There are other resources that touch on similar themes; this is a "condensed" version, and I hope it triggers real curiosity in some of you; if it does, you will then also come to realise how limited is the thinking of some people (in government and in opposition) who purport to understand what is happening. They have never considered the line at the top of this post, which is critical to understanding how limited our own analyses are.