A year ago today I started writing a blog.
I’ve engaged and debated a wild variety of interesting, knowledgeable and cool people who have contributed to the site by commenting and asking questions. I write to discover. I write to expose myself to unseen dimensions of reality. But mostly I write because I like engaging with other people. I am thankful for your continued engagement and continued support, especially those who choose to disagree with me.
Today, I present a couple of brief retrospectives.
First, my ten most-read posts in the last year:
- Krugman, Diocletian & Neofeudalism
- Spreading the Wealth Around
- The Absurdity of NATO
- Why is the Fed Not Printing Like Crazy?
- Gold’s Value Today
- President Choomwagon
- Judge Katherine Forrest is a Modern American Hero
- America Priced in Gold
- Enter the Swan
- Krugman Calls For Alien Invasion?
Second, ten posts that didn’t get quite as much attention and deserve a little more:
- Why QE Didn’t Cause Hyperinflation
- Does Jamie Dimon Even Know What Hedging Risk Is?
- Double or Nothing: How Wall Street is Destroying Itself
- Groupon: Unsustainable Parasite?
- Job Creation 101
- Iran Did 9/11?
- The Treasury Bubble in One Graph
- Zombie Economics
- The Problem With Military Keynesianism
- Austerity & Extremism
Finally, here’s my (so-far) only ever radio interview:
Peace, y’all.
azizonomics 
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AZIZ: I’m looking forward to catching up on my reading. Does “Peace, y’all” imply that you are watching the US southern states who are prospering (at least relatively) in spite of Obama administration runaway deficits-debt and resistance to private enterprise, oil-gas-coal production, ballot security and immigration-drug law enforcement. Note that all southern “border” states, save CA, now have Republican governors — FL, AL, MS, LA,TX, NM, AZ.
Thank you for the post. I will look forward to reading all the useful information. I am bullish on gold and silver bullion as one remedy for our problems. I can’t give you the exact date when your gold coins are going to be worth more than they are today, but I believe that the state of the US economy, and the state of the world economy for that matter, is so out of whack that the price of gold has no choice but to go higher because there’s no plan in place to straighten out this mess so the US dollar is going to continue to fall. check out http://www.extremebullion.com for some buying opportunities and good luck with your investments.
Aziz,
I’m looking forward to going through the posts I missed. You’re a fresh voice in the financial blogosphere and as I’ve said before, you try to put words to things many of us feel, but are so complex we don’t know were to begin discussion.
And you’re not afraid to brawl.
The first time someone called me an idiot here in the blogsphere, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Since then, I’ve learned to ignore the douche-bags, but look forward to heated debate with intellectually honest, truth-seekers like you. Those sparring matches tighten us both up.
You built this.
Best,
Mark
Ad Hominem attacks show us who the real idiots are. Real thinkers understand going ad hominem almost always loses the argument by default.
Mark: Amen and hallelujah!
From sixty years in and around politics-government, I can sympathize and confirm that those without a legitimate argument — both manipulators and the brainwashed/brain dead — are likely to attack you rather than your argument. The last HONEST U.S. “liberal” politician I can recall was Hubert Humphrey; Barry Goldwater valued discussion with him. Current columnist-economist Paul Samuelson seems to qualify.
Some more posts I think deserve attention:
Does the Fed Control the Money Supply
Shadow Banking 101
The Abolition of Deflation
Why the Left Misunderstands Income Inequality
Is Marxism Coming Back?
John, thanks for all the hard work involved in sustaining your blog.
Keep pushing those boundaries!!
It’s because of blogs like yours that I’m thankful for Al Gore’s Internet. 🙂
Al Gore invented Aziz.
AZIZ: I’m glad that you didn’t invent Al Gore — I would have to hate you! You might remind the US military critics that the Department of Defense “invented” the internet. By the way: in late August our grandson will be visiting friends in the UK on the way home from duty in Afghanistan; if you’re interested in the chance to meet him, contact me @ canddguier@aol.com and we’ll see about possibilities.
Yeah I want to see you on Bloomberg, debating with Becky Quick.
I also want to see Kramer have a meltdown on TV, after debating with you.
Well done. It is my favorite site.
Nigel Farage needs an economic advisor. You should enter Politics.
i found this off zerohedge few weeks ago, very impressed so far. swan story was great.
ha ha the faceless man. The man behind the curtain.
Is this our Black Swan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19048998
Ebola is now in a Capital, not some backwater village.
This could be very interesting…
Also seal flu…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19055961
Please allow me to add my voice of thanks, Aziz, we are all fortunate that you do what you do. Your writings are not only interesting but fun too. I hope you are having fun as well. Keep up the good work. And a great bunch of commenters, too.
Congrats!
While I’m more of a lurker and I believe that this is my first time posting, congratulations on your first year anniversary, Aziz! I hope your blog continues to be successful!
Thanks. Look forward to some more comments from you; your comments on Noah and Evan’s blogs are very thoughtful.
Actually Aziz, I hang out more on Daniel Kuehn’s “Facts and Other Stubborn Things” and Lord Keynes’s “Social Democracy for the 21st Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective”. I do enjoy Noah Smith’s blog and Evan Soltas’s blog though, though lately for some reason my comments have been disappearing over at the latter.
Out of curiosity Aziz, what is your educational background? I’m a university student with a life-long interest in economics.
Also, have you heard of Dr. Michael Emmett Brady? He’s a scholar of decision theory based in California. Have you ever read his papers on the Social Science Research Network?
If not, here they are!
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1033456
He also has other published works you can find on Google Scholar.
I studied English in college, so my background is more in writing/philosophy than economics, but I have crammed in a lot of economics/finance learning in the last 5-7 years.
Brady’s work is interesting — I read this recently:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1751569
Brady’s view of Hayekian uncertainty is slightly unfair; it is like he is trying to cram Hayek’s view into a Keynesian framework. Hayek never really made the case that the “alert entrepreneur” can even get close to w=1. Markets are by definition experimental, and certainly even alert entrepreneurs will very often end up going bust due to w being closer to 0 than 1. Hayek’s point (made contra to Oskar Lange) is that the sum of dispersed knowledge throughout the market is much closer to 1 than the sum of planners’ knowledge in a planned economy.
Excellent. I’m glad to hear that you have heard of the work of Dr. Michael Emmett Brady. I also take it that you’ve read Hayek’s paper, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”? Hayek may be arguing that the planner cannot know more than the market, but Brady is criticising Hayek for not using the proper definition of uncertainty.
What other papers by Dr. Michael Emmett Brady have you read?
The problem with studying economics is that it is a social science rooted in philosophy. You can look at economics from the point of you own personal psychological characteristics (Are you a control freak and perfectionist) or do you believe that their is someone else out there who can make a better decision than you. Central Planners believe they are gifted and can make a decision. Old Russian Statists believed more powerful computers and increased statistics points would solve problems. They thought that the peasant farmer was inferior to the “Agronomist” How can you replace hundreds of years of family experience and knowledge at the local farm soil and climatic condition with a central Agronomist. That is insanity and denial. If Agriculture is the primary rude produce of an economy, it can be applied at more complex manufactures, and even services.
Read and Study the Ukrainian Holodomor. Central Planners failed and they back peddled by murdering peasants by stealing grain to cover up their failure.