Overview of Financial Blogs

No self-respecting industry these days is without a must-read blog. And economics is not an exception. Although they vary wildly on fine points like depth of analysis and accuracy of predictions, they are now part of information universe and should be treated as such. As economics is broken between "insiders" and "outsiders", the former are also a window into the inner workings, preoccupations and gossip of huge (and currently shrinking) financial industry. Her is one funny take on the subject

[Jul 29, 2009] CapitalistImperialistPig One Idiot's Guide to the Economosphere

Paul Krugman - a very clever fellow who should never be allowed to use the word "wonk." (If it is a word)
Brad DeLong - Another clever fellow - unfortunately also a reincarnation of Savronala. Could stand to be more temperate/mealy mouthed.
Eugene Fama - Who?
Tyler Cowen - A very clever fellow who would be more successful if he were less concerned with being the coolest kid in the school.
John Cochrane - Eugene Fama's son-in-law. The Fama family's most useful output: Children's stories.
Greg Mankiw I - Prolific writer of unintelligible but prestigious textbooks. Good blogger.
Greg Mankiw II - Bottom dwelling Bush admin econo-liar. Not known to be related to his namesake.
Steven Landsberg - Math/relativity dropout. Also, frequently annoying twit.
Steven Levitt - Economist with a genius for self-promotion.
Milton Friedmann, John M Keynes, Adam Smith. Members of two famous economics clubs: G = good economists, D = dead economists. An important but unproven conjecture holds that G is a subset of D.
Lawrence Summers - Former Harvard President and Treasury Sec. Famed for his groundbreaking study: "The Economics of Tact."
Wonk - The sound a goose makes as it is sucked into the engine of an Airbus A-380 personal luxury jet with onboard parking for your Rolls.

The XXI century can be called "century of disinformation" as all major outlets being essentially voices of powerful financial groups. As Stefan Stern aptly noted that there is "No hiding in misinformation age" (September 22 2008 )

“The information age” is a misleading label. It implies that most if not all of the words and data you get to consume in various media are essentially true. But this cannot be right, as some of the excessive market free-for-all of recent weeks has shown.

So if you read WSJ, NYT or FT.com the smell of corruption and attempt to whitewatch facts in the interests of power elite is almost physical. And the most important countervailing force now are paradoxically financial blogs.

Here are some of the most influential blogs across industries ranging from publishing and finance to health care and Hollywood, put together by The Wall Street Journal's beat reporters in these areas.

Top

Naked capitalism An excellent analysis of the current economic situation. Too many blogs are derivative but Yves Smith's is not. Often contains insightful analysis of events, the analysis that you will never find in mainstream press. Naked Capitalism and Calculated Risk are one of the few who accurately foretold in some detail the subprime mess.
.
The Big Picture Barry Ritholtz covers different spectrum of financial news then Yves Smith . His posts are very insightful and timely but in a different way then posts in Naked Capitalist. He has a very useful skeptical view on establishment.
Economist's View One of the few rational economists in blogosphere. Very good comments which enhance the value of the posts considerably.

Calculated Risk -- this blog concentrates on real estate problems and benefits from the fact that author in no longer in business and can freely express his (based on substantial experience) views. Here is one of the Comments from the economics blogs discussion at Brad Delong site:

Another vote for Calculated Risk, even though it isn't really an economics blog - call it applied economics with a narrow range of applications.
Damn good at what it does.

... the blog is also an amazing underdog (underpig?) story-- that an anonymous woman whose credentials aren't some degree or professorship, but just mastery of craft could be cited by so many as one of the top ten is an achievement on her part, but no small indictment of the economics establishment.
Yes, she has a great partner, but we all read her for her snarkiness, the same way we watch car races for the crashes.

Paul Krugman - The New York Times Krugman is a talented and courageous political commentator. Along with Thomas Frank, Kevin Phillips he has been a leading figure in rejecting the idea that the Republican party represents a serious viewpoint that should be accorded respect, even in disagreement. Paul Krugman is a hero for many of us because he is willing to speak truth to power even when there is enormous pressure to keep quiet under Bush regime. Many of his political columns survived the test of the time including his critical approach to Bush administration. On Nov. 19, 2000, when the Bush-Gore election was still in doubt, Krugman wrote:

"Suppose that George W. Bush pulls it off -- that he gets to the White House on the strength of chads and butterflies. Will he make good on his boast of being a 'uniter, not a divider'? His behavior since election night is a bad omen; it suggests that what Mr. Bush means is that everyone should unite to give him what he wants."

But at the same time he is neo-classical economist and at times pretty aggressive one. His critique of John Kenneth Galbright were blatantly wrong and actually temporary positioned him at the far right of economic spectrum. . As an economist he is guilty of uncritically (and naively) using mathematical models without understanding the limits of their applicability. The idea that mathematical model should be simpler if variables are not known with sufficient precision is pretty foreign to him. But without taking into account the precision of variables economic models a little more that masturbation with mathematical symbols. Like other neo-classical economists he is partially responsible for the current crises although not to the extent Milton Friedman and other Chicago school economists and his colleague for Princeton Ben Bernanke are...

Brad Delong Blog -- Brad Delong is a "Respectable Professor Of Dismal Science" and a very controversial blogger. He scored a few excellent posts but most material is grayish and the main value are in comments of the readers. Some time his posts are even worse then grey:

He has absurdly naive and childish for a Berkeley professor views on foreign policy: the kind of person who has no idea how ignorant he is and how easily he can be deceived and manipulated by propaganda.
He also is definitely suffering from the excessive love for Greenspan and Maestro's monetary policy. Call it an academic's fantasy or just gratefulness for some help in getting his position but still it's really bad. It's clear even to a non-specialist that Greenspan looked credit bubble (based on housing bubble) in the face, blinked and hoped that he'll retire before sh*t hit the fan. According to Willem Buiter Greenspan's era interest rate policy was far from the sign of any intelligence and can be performed by "a bunch of moderately intelligent graduate students in economics".

So please beware that in certain areas Professor Delong made very little progress in grasping reality...

His blog attract very gifted commentators and comments are often of very high quality. He also have a very good political blog.

FT Alphaville and FT blogs (Willem Buiter’s Maverecon, Martil Wolf The Economists’ Forum , but not anything written by Anders Aslund ). FT sites have a definite City bias (but somehow manage to hide it better or at least make it less objectionable then The Economist's bias).
FT Alphaville is an excellent resource linking to extremely good links to FT.com articles. I am a subscriber, but often I miss important articles in paper edition of FT that are covered in FT Alphaville
1. Please avoid Aslund as he is just an establishment shill. IMHO no real talent either as a forecaster or economic commentator. Truth be told as an economic commentator he is not yet at the level of Larry Kudloff but he is moving in the same direction :-)
2. Butler and Wolf views on USA economics looks worth reading. Their views on world economic are interesting too although much more questionable. Like most of British press both have a maniacal distrust for Russia competing in this respect with some rednecks, so sometimes articles or entries look really funny (or idiotic, depending on your point of view). See for example Willem Buiter’s Maverecon Don’t worry, we can always lease Heathrow to the Russians… where Butler, generally a serious economist, behaves like a complete idiot (in a sense of IQ below 40). Another ridiculous personality in this area is Martin Wolf (who often writes a very good analysis of the USA economic events and as such is highly recommended) who sometime managed to demonstrate in Russia-related articles IQ below 20 as in the following: Martin Wolf - Why Putin’s rule threatens both Russia and the west ;-). That's a real achievement...
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis Slightly libertarian bias but the blog contains a lot of high quality materials for peoples subscribing to any economical or political doctrine. Mish views on inflation should be taken with a grain of salt.

Etc

The Mess That Greenspan Made -- I like the name of the blog ;-)

Prudent bear
Angry Bear
The Daily Reckoning - From the Bestselling Authors of Empire of Debt

Economic Rebalancing - interesting views on current imbalances and hedge funds industry...

charles hugh smith-Weblog and wEssays

mike larson / interest rate roundup

Bill Fleckenstein Article Index - MSN Money

Trends I'm Watching Predictions

immobilienblasen

Economic Dreams - Economic Nightmares

Econbrowser

patrick.net

macroblog

RGE

Nouriel Roubini's Blog

thehousingbubble

housingpanic

globaleconomicanalysis

iTuilip

russ winter

safe haven

the mortgage lender implode-O-meter

brett steenbarger

housingdoom

Econoblogs at War with Data

Greg Mankiw's Blog. Gred Mankiw is "either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous." I think the latter is true.
cafe hayek
Capital Commerce (Pethokoukis)
Kudlow -- famous Al Kudlow, simply amazing guy in comparison with whom Trofim Lysenko looks like a study in prudent scientific research ;-)
Poor and Stupid (Luskin)
Tax Policy Blog
The Club for Growth

Old News ;-)

[Oct 1, 2009] Bond-related blogs

[Sep 18, 2009] Guest Post Are Financial Blogs Trustworthy « naked capitalism

By George Washington of Washington’s Blog.
The talking heads say that financial blogs aren’t trustworthy.

But the whole debate about blogs versus mainstream media is nonsense.

In fact, many of the world’s top PhD economics professors and financial advisors have their own blogs. For example (in no particular order):

Nouriel Roubini

Paul Krugman

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Simon Johnson

Frank Shostak

Willem Buiter

Tyler Cohen

Greg Mankiw

Richard Baldwin

Mark Thoma

Michael Pettis

Brad DeLong

James Hamilton and Menzie Chinn

Michel Chossudovsky

Michael Hudson

Yves Smith

Rolfe Winkler

And the conclusions of economists who don’t have their own blogs are collected by other bloggers and on YouTube videos. For example, this blog rounds up everything Marc Faber says.

And you’ve got blogs like Zero Hedge that break stories about Goldman and high-frequency trading months before the mainstream media. And insightful commentators like Barry Ritholtz and Mish and many others.

So what is “news”? What the talking heads choose to cover? Or what various leading experts are saying - and oftentimes heatedly debating one against the other - on their blogs?

I would argue that mainstream newspapers haven’t just lost readers because of the Internet as an abstract new medium, but that they lost readers because they became - with some exceptions - nothing but official stenographers for the powers-that-be. No wonder people have lost all faith in them.

Indeed, as of February, only 5% of the pundits discussing various government bailout plans on cable news shows are real economists. Why not hear what real economists and financial experts say?

To the extent that blogs offer actual news and the mainstream media does not, the latter will continue to lose eyeballs and ad revenues to the former.

Of course, many financial blogs are not very good. The trick is to learn which are trustworthy and accurate.

And this is not to imply that all mainstream commentators are short on facts. Some are really good. Once again, the trick is find the good ones.

Thoughts On Economics

Six Apart, the creators of Typepad (the hosting service that I use for all my blogs), publishes a website called Blogs.com, aimed at helping visitors discover the best in the genre.

One of the site's popular features is a section called Top Ten Lists, where selected bloggers get to highlight sites others might find interesting and informative. Some recent business and finance-related contributors include Stephen Vita, publisher of Alchemy of Finance, the editor-in-chief of FiveCentNickel, and Russell Bailyn, publisher of Russell Bailyn's Financial Planning Blog.

In today's edition, entitled "Coming to Grips with the Great Unraveling - 10 Great Financial Blogs," I listed a few of the blogs that help keep me informed about what is really going on, as follows:

Calculated Risk

Cara Community

FT Alphaville

Jr Deputy Accountant

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Naked Capitalism

Of Two Minds

The Automatic Earth

The Big Picture

Zero Hedge

To be sure, there are plenty of others -- my RSS reader, for example, has more than 350 blog feeds alone -- so one shouldn't assume I could get by with just the sites listed above. Nonetheless, they represent an excellent starting point (along with Financial Armageddon and When Giants Fall, of course) for keeping tabs on a dangerously uncertain and fast-changing world.

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Financial Armageddon

Gongol.com, a long-time favorite of mine, is out with its latest EconDirectory, and I'm happy to report that Financial Armageddon has risen to 13th place (from 16th place in July) with more than 200,000 page views per month.

Rank	Site	Page Views	Pageview Ratio	...making this the ___ of business/econ websites:
1	Calculated Risk	67375	100.00%	USA Today
2	Big Picture	62161	92.26%	Wall Street Journal
3	Michael Shedlock	51743	76.80%	New York Times
4	Marginal Revolution	30512	45.29%	New York Times
5	Naked Capitalism	25883	38.42%	Los Angeles Times
6	Gregory Mankiw	17803	26.42%	Chicago Tribune
7	Carl Futia	14766	21.92%	Houston Chronicle
8	Economist's View	11143	16.54%	Long Island Newsday
9	Baseline Scenario	10876	16.14%	Arizona Republic
10	VoxEU	9857	14.63%	Boston Globe
11	Tax Prof	8466	12.57%	Portland Oregonian
12	European Tribune	7043	10.45%	Kansas City Star
13	Financial Armageddon	6797	10.09%	San Jose Mercury-News
14	Half Sigma	6303	9.36%	Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
15	Gongol	5764	8.56%	Columbus Dispatch

Paul Krugman - a very clever fellow who should never be allowed to use the word "wonk." (If it is a word)

Brad DeLong - Another clever fellow - unfortunately also a reincarnation of Savronala. Could stand to be more temperate/mealy mouthed.

Eugene Fama - Who?

Tyler Cowen - A very clever fellow who would be more successful if he were less concerned with being the coolest kid in the school.

John Cochrane - Eugene Fama's son-in-law. The Fama family's most useful output: Children's stories.

Greg Mankiw I - Prolific writer of unintelligible but prestigious textbooks. Good blogger.

Greg Mankiw II - Bottom dwelling Bush admin econo-liar. Not known to be related to his namesake.

Steven Landsberg - Math/relativity dropout. Also, frequently annoying twit.

Steven Levitt - Economist with a genius for self-promotion.

Milton Friedman, John M Keynes, Adam Smith. Members of two famous economics clubs: G = good economists, D = dead economists. An important but unproven conjecture holds that G is a subset of D.

Lawrence Summers - Former Harvard President and Treasury Sec. Famed for his groundbreaking study: "The Economics of Tact."

Wonk - The sound a goose makes as it is sucked into the engine of an Airbus A-380 personal luxury jet with onboard parking for your Rolls.

Anthropogenic climate change denialists
Market Magic libertarians
Creationists and like-minded anti-Darwinians
Holocaust deniers
Birthers (Obama is not a US citizen)
Black helicopter conspiracy theorists*

Most of these people are not in mental institutions. Instead, they are in the Republican Party or other Libertarian fringe groups. What exactly is it that attracts the nut jobs to right wing politics? A lot of these people are just the left behind, the people who couldn't or wouldn't understand history, science, or logic. Others are just incapable of stretching their world view to accomodate reality. Still others are clinical. A common thread is a sense of grievance, but Dems have people like that too. There are left wing nutjobs, to be sure, but they don't run the Democratic party, or even have a real voice in it.

The people who control the Republican Party and it's machinery (Grover Norquist, Fox News, most other news) are usually not that dumb, of course. Instead they seem to be cynical opportunists seeking to take advantage of the credulity of masses by spreading what they know to be lies. Here I have in mind the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as well as the Hannitys and Rushes. They really only have one platform: low taxes for the ultra-rich.

*In order of increasing separation from reality.

[Nov 16, 2008] This over-excitable Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

While being a Briton there is something deeply southern in his penchant to wild exaggerations... Few US-related material might be OK (he served as Washington correspondent for some time) but got forbid read anything he write about Europe, especially Eastern Europe or, worse, Russia ;-). All-in-all writings of this columnist need to be taken with a large dose of slat...

Top 50 Business Professor Blogs - Biz.Edu

Economics and Finance
From the economy of sports to the impact of traffic on the economy, these blogs offer a wide range of information from some of the best professors in the field.

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong. This popular blog, written by an economy professor from U.C. Berkeley, features posts about the economy with a heavy dose of politics.

Financial Literacy and Ignorance. Annamaria Lusardi at Dartmouth writes about personal finance and how much (or how little) most people know about it.

Pat Utomi’s Musings. Running for President of the African Democratic Congress, this professor at Lagos Business School-Pan African University writes about economics as well as discusses his platform.

Professor Andrade’s Comments on Business, Economics, and Finance. This professor discusses the trade deficit, tax cuts, and more on this blog.

ProfessorVC. This professor of entrepreneurial finance blogs about business and other interests.

Carpe Diem. Mark J. Perry writes about gas prices, real estate bubbles, and more on this popular blog.

Division of Labour. This collaborative blog is written by several professors and focuses on economics.

The Transportationist. David Levinson and the Nexus Research Group on Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems write about topics such as traffic congestion, economic impact of traffic improvements, and bridge safety.

Organizations and Markets. Four professors from America and Europe collaborate on this blog which touches on various aspects of economics.

Conservation Finance. The title says it all for this blog written by Lars Christian Smith.

CoreEconomics. Written by Melbourne Business School’s Joshua Gans, this blog looks at economics and a few other topics as well.

The Wages of Wins Journal. These three professors of economics look at the economics of sports in this blog, which is a companion piece to their book The Wages of Wins.

The Borjas Blog. Professor George Borjas specializes in labor economics and blogs about immigration and labor around the world.

Economist’s View. Mark Thoma writes such topics as economic growth, financial markets, speculation and bubbles, and more on his economy blog.

A highly dubious top 10 list

The post stimulated an interesting discussion

Posted by Justin Fox |

But that's not gonna stop me from posting it. From Brad DeLong:

Here's what NetNewsWire throws up as tops in attention in the "economics" category:
* Mark Thoma's Economist's View http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/
* Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/
* Justin Fox's Curious Capitalist http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/
* Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/
* James Hamilton's and Menzie Chinn's Econbrowser http://www.econbrowser.com/
* Angry Bear http://angrybear.blogspot.com/
* WSJ Real Time Economics http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/
* Paul Krugman http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
* Felix Salmon's Market Movers http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/
* Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed http://paul.kedrosky.com/

Comments

Obvious answer: your top ten doesn't include you yourself, so one of the others will have to go.

Posted by: g | July 24, 2008 at 04:05 PM

I know,I know. Brad DeLongs Weblog is missing. Its disheartening, the amount of ignorance in the world. Suffice to say, knowledgeable people know the best economic weblogs. We don't need no stinkin list makers.

Posted by: Joe | July 24, 2008 at 04:24 PM

How about the lack of a non-US-based blog?
I thought 'www' was an acronym for World Wide Web.

Posted by: Stephen Gordon | July 24, 2008 at 04:28 PM

A case, I think, of the earth is a globular versus the earth is flat. Views differ.

Posted by: Joe | July 24, 2008 at 04:28 PM

Whuh? No Luskin?

Posted by: jerry | July 24, 2008 at 04:30 PM

No Calculated Risk? Seriously?

Posted by: Paul | July 24, 2008 at 04:33 PM

Dani Rodrik's blog on development economics really needs to be on here (http://rodrik.typepad.com/). He's one of the best development economists around and his blog is always well written, fair and interesting.
He really needs to be on any list of the top 10 economics related blogs.

Posted by: Alex B | July 24, 2008 at 04:44 PM

Mankiw's blog and econlog by caplan and kling. Also, how about abnormal returns as a blog of blogs?.

Posted by: robby | July 24, 2008 at 05:10 PM

Calculated Risk needs to be way up there.

Posted by: Emma Anne | July 24, 2008 at 05:19 PM

What about Robert Reich's blog:
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Dr. Steven J. Balassi | July 24, 2008 at 05:19 PM

Mankiw doesn't write enough to rate I think. I agree on Arnold Kling.
You need one right winger at least, if no other reason than the debate, if you don't like Luskin what about Cafe Hayek?

Also, I think Rodrick is good if you are economist, he is too hard to understand if not. So that one depends on what you are rating for, the general public or economists.

On that score, maybe Jane Galt, er Megan McArdle? She gets a lot of eyeballs and has a way of sparking debate with the way she writes. But she is not even an economist, so maybe not on that basis.

Posted by: napablogger | July 24, 2008 at 05:19 PM

Perhaps it should be the Top 25 economic's blogs? I don't think 10 will do justice to the diversity of our subject and viewpoints.

Posted by: Dr. Steven J. Balassi | July 24, 2008 at 05:22 PM

I use Thoma, Kedrosky, Hamilton, Krugman. I also subscribe to DeLong, Naked Capitalism, Cassandra Does Tokyo, Brad Setser, William Polley; and Calculated Risk until they dropped the full RSS feeds...
I try and get minimal overlap but minimal gaps as well...

Posted by: PeeDee | July 24, 2008 at 05:42 PM

I follow Nouriel Roubini when he's free...not a monitor subscriber. Along with others mentioned here, including this site and Calculated Risk. Brad Setser's good, too.

Posted by: anon | July 24, 2008 at 06:07 PM

I find Tyler Cowen to be utterly unreadable.
He is amongst the biggest of all the right wing hacks, only he is somewhat more eloquent than the obvious morons like Luskin. That eloquence allows him to get away with saying really stupid stuff.

EXAMPLE: His tirade about "Predatory Borrowing" was a huge embarrassment, for him as well as the NYT. It revealed him to be a clueless idealogue, guilty of the most egregious rightwingnuttery. He is unworthy of any thinking person's further time.

Posted by: Adam Smith | July 24, 2008 at 06:38 PM

Musts include blogs are Calculated risk and Naked Capitalism

Posted by: plschwartz | July 24, 2008 at 06:54 PM

Impossible to list ten I think. I like Barry Ritholtz but I don't think he's top ten so I'd knock him out and replace him with yourself. But then what to do with Calculated Risk, Brad Setser, Naked Capitalism, Wlliam Poley, Dani Rodrik? That's a Top Fifteen. Glad to see someone besides me finds Tyler Cowen intolerable though.

Posted by: AndrewBW | July 24, 2008 at 07:09 PM

Another vote for Calculated Risk, even though it isn't really an economics blog - call it applied economics with a narrow range of applications.
Damn good at what it does.

Posted by: ottnott | July 24, 2008 at 07:11 PM

If we think of economics narrowly defined, I would downrate several blog that I consider essential reading (including this one and Krugman's) simply because so much of their excellent comment is outside of economics. (Just think of anything involving keywords "John Yoo", "Impeach" or "Why can't we have a better")
I would also severely downweight any blog that does not host comments (such as Mankiw's).

If we define economics narrowly, my vote for top is Chinn and Hamilton.

Posted by: SvN | July 24, 2008 at 07:36 PM

Posted by: tom s. | July 24, 2008 at 07:37 PM

for a non-american blog, what about Buiter's Maverecon?

Posted by: SvN | July 24, 2008 at 07:40 PM

My portal to economic news is Dean Baker's Beat the Press (http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press) from which I link to j-bradford etc. I also have it (j-bradford etc) in my favorites list.
I also read:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

Calculated Risk

and Brad Setser

What I like about all these blogs is that they are empirically based, literate and analytical. If these folks refer to Marx, odds are they have actually read something Marx wrote, decided for themselves what he said that was of value and discarded the rest.

Posted by: jim | July 24, 2008 at 07:52 PM

Free Exchange must be there if any MSM-hosted site makes the cut. Becker-Posner, even though they don't post often. Mankiw, Rodrik as others have mentioned.
I like WSJ Environmental Capitalism, though they may be too specialized for this.

Posted by: Amitav | July 24, 2008 at 08:28 PM

No for Ritholtz and Kedrosky -- fine for trading and markets and business but no actual understanding of economics. Justin Fox is on the edge. Yes to Brad Setser, Maverecon, and Rodrik.

Posted by: Andy | July 24, 2008 at 08:56 PM

I'm completely unqualified to judge, but (seriously) shame on all of you for not including Duncan Black for his coverage of street economics.
Tyler Cowen's sense of satire is a bit too dry for my taste, oftentimes I swear he's serious. So I'd pick McArdle over Cowen. Megan or Andrea.

Posted by: jerry | July 24, 2008 at 09:14 PM

Calculated Risk, yes. Marginal Revolution, no. I'd second the nominations of naked capitalism. Too many blogs are derivative but Yves Smith's is not.

Posted by: surprise | July 24, 2008 at 10:12 PM

That NetNewsWire list strikes me as deeply suspect, and not just because I'm on there and you're not. But shouldn't you just give Six Apart your own totally subjective top 10 list and ignore the Web 2.0 noise of "attention" ratings and commenters' opinions?
[But this is what NetNewsWire reports *I* pay attention to. It's my *personalized* attention ranking...]

Posted by: Justin Fox | July 25, 2008 at 06:15 AM

Free Exchange is often written more like an Econ 101 lecture than most other econ blogs - that is why I like it so much.
I really like Megan McArdle's Asymmetrical Information, but I would say that at most 50% of what she writes is actually about economics, the rest being culture/politics/random crap.

I also read Marginal Revolution and, of course, Grasping Reality with Both Hands.

Posted by: Craig | July 25, 2008 at 06:27 AM

Craig, you're being a little to generous. More then 75% of McArdle's stuff is crap. I'd vote for Nouriel Roubini.

Posted by: CN | July 25, 2008 at 06:37 AM

Scratch my previous comment. I misunderstood the NetNewsWire attention ranking. I've read up on it since, and if I understand correctly it ranks the blogs that YOU pay the most attention to. So of course you're not on the list. And it strikes me as an entirely appropriate way to get at your 10 favorites of the moment, with the caveat that you don't necessarily have to agree with the taxonomy. That is, I'd say Barry Ritholtz, Felix Salmon, Paul Kedrosky and I aren't really economics bloggers in the sense that Mark Thoma or Cowen/Tabarrok or Hamilton/Chinn are.

Posted by: Justin Fox | July 25, 2008 at 06:46 AM

2 top economics blogs missing from that list:
Calculated Risk
Beat the Press (Dean Baker)

Kedrosky and Salmon are great *great* blogs, but they're more about investment markets than economics.

Posted by: peatey | July 25, 2008 at 07:10 AM

Iyigun (Good day)Blog is also missing.
http://muratiyigun.blogspot.com/
Mr. Iyigun offers Marginal Middle Eastern Perspectives on Economics, Politics & Development.

Posted by: Said Salih KAYMAKCI | July 25, 2008 at 08:07 AM

i'd vote for calculated risk and naked capitalism

Posted by: ernie | July 25, 2008 at 08:55 AM

Dean Baker's "Beat the Press" is unique in providing timely commentary on contemporary press treatment of economic issues. It deserves a much wider readership.

Posted by: Rogermac | July 25, 2008 at 09:33 AM

"Kedrosky and Salmon are great *great* blogs, but they're more about investment markets than economics"
agree

Posted by: jamzo | July 25, 2008 at 10:52 AM

Two more essentials: Naked Capitalism
China Financial Markets (http://www.piaohaoreport.sampasite.com/)
Both terrific.

Posted by: dissent | July 25, 2008 at 12:13 PM

Frank the sales forecaster -- I have never "assured" anyone about anything in my life.
Perhaps you might care to forward that email to me ? I have no clue as to what you are referring to . . .

Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | July 25, 2008 at 01:05 PM

The two up-and-comers offering oases of reason in a desert of partisan blogs:
Capital Gains and Games (www.capitalgamesandgames.com)

EconomistMom (www.EconomistMom.com)

Posted by: Brooks | July 25, 2008 at 01:45 PM

Chris Blattman's blog is tops for development.
chrisblattman.blogspot.com

Posted by: Phil | July 25, 2008 at 02:57 PM

Naked Capitalism certainly belongs on the list.
(although what do I know? Mr. Delong once said on this site that I penned the worst article ever to appear in the WSJ - possibly because he missed the fact that it was what I considered a rather obvious joke!)

Posted by: rob cyran | July 25, 2008 at 04:32 PM

Naked Capitalism certainly belongs on the list.
(although what do I know? Mr. Delong once said on this site that I penned the worst article ever to appear in the WSJ - possibly because he missed the fact that it was what I considered a rather obvious joke!)

Posted by: rob cyran | July 25, 2008 at 04:33 PM

Naked Capitalism certainly belongs on the list.
(although what do I know? Mr. Delong once said on this site that I penned the worst article ever to appear in the WSJ - possibly because he missed the fact that it was what I considered a rather obvious joke!)

Posted by: rob cyran | July 25, 2008 at 04:34 PM

sorry for triple post - my connection flipped out on me.

Posted by: rob cyran | July 25, 2008 at 04:37 PM

I second Naked Capitalism and Calculated Risk, especially in light of his being one of the only ones who accurately foretold in some detail. the housing crisis
Brad Delong's shouldn't be near the list. He rarely writes anything anymore, just linking to other people who do the hard work.

Mankiw is similar but worse. Half is posts are just self-promotional.

Posted by: RN | July 25, 2008 at 08:12 PM

Here's another vote for Calculated Risk.
No one's mentioned it, but I think the blog is also an amazing underdog (underpig?) story-- that an anonymous woman whose credentials aren't some degree or professorship, but just mastery of craft could be cited by so many as one of the top ten is an achievement on her part, but no small indictment of the economics establishment. Yes, she has a great partner, but we all read her for her snarkiness, the same way we watch car races for the crashes.

Posted by: smc | July 25, 2008 at 09:36 PM

Oh, Stumbling and Mumbling.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com

Posted by: tom s. | July 26, 2008 at 05:30 AM

One more vote for Willem Buiter's . Alas, maverecon takes off for vacation tomorrow and will not resume blogging until August 28.

Posted by: fred Thompson | July 26, 2008 at 04:29 PM

The Mises Institute
http://www.Mises.org

Posted by: Chris | July 26, 2008 at 06:11 PM

At least four of those--Fox, Salmon, Kedrosky, Ritholtz--are Finance blogs, not Economics ones. (WSJ is open for argument, but not much of one.)
Which is my argument against Yves Smith and, to a lesser extent, CR/Tantaville.

Hamilton/Chinn no question. AB, no question (bias admitted; it would be a clearer choice if you skiogs, it would be Blattman or Rodrik, Capital Gains and Games (Samwick et al.), Econospeak, Stumbling and Mumbling, and Polley, with Economist Mom on deck. Which gives you a spectrum--that's the English translation of Brooks's argumentfor CG&G and EconMom--and one to keep attention on development.

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