TL:DR Great framework for understanding the world of macroeconomics which has repeatedly proven its efficacy in predicting economic events and their consequences in real-time via Cullen Roche’s blog, PragCap.com. Buy this book to get one of the smartest, most under-rated minds in finance to explain macroeconomics simply yet thoroughly. Great for those new to economics (though if this is you, how on earth did you find this! You are so lucky!) or the wonkiest econ nerd out there.
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Full review:
Kids sure are impressionable little turds. After a few nuggets of advice from my high school economics teacher, I decided to study economics in college rather than business (“you can always go to business school later, economics is more broadly applicable” – all pretty terrible advice in retrospect). In college, I constantly questioned the things professors tried to instill in us about classical and Keynesian economics. There were always strange assumptions that seemed to invalidate entire theories (“rational man”, for one), implicit or explicit political undertones, and things that just really never made sense.
This was compounded during the 2008 financial crisis when it became clear that very few economists or others predicted it yet still offered up explanations afterward about how it made sense with their models. At that point, I started searching for another perspective. I dug into Austrian economics but that also fell apart as I poked at the seams so I continued searching. Eventually I stumbled upon PragCap – Cullen’s blog. His framework made sense, didn’t depend unassumable assumptions, and was based entirely in concrete real-world processes and interactions. It was truly a breath of fresh air and made me feel sane again after wondering for years if I was crazy to disagree with so much of the economics taught in universities.
I continued to follow Cullen’s blog for years, watching him successfully describe how policies and market events would impact the financial world using his framework and then saw those things all pan out as described (Take a look at his predictions section on his blog to see some). I peppered him with questions throughout the year and he always patiently responded and explained things simply.
This book is the culmination of years of Cullen’s thoughts and posts distilled into an easy to digest read. If you are well versed in economics and finance but have always questioned why many theories fail to predict anything, please do yourself a favor and buy this book. If you’re new to the world of economics, this is still a generally approachable book that avoids unnecessary jargon as much as possible. You can also search on PragCap for additional explanations of anything that may be confusing.
This is an awfully long review so nobody is probably reading at this point but all of this is to say, I really wish Cullen would get more press or interviews because the world would truly be a better place if more people understood how macroeconomics worked. Buy this book and make this world a better place.
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For-leasure-only content in poor printing with most figures blurred.
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