formal education aside whats the best way to learn economics? How is a person supposed to learn the way economic markets functions when (from what i read on this board) the economics course work cant be trusted...
i respect experience but come on, the average person isn't going to gain experience interpreting economic statistics without some form of guidance. fed chiefs and secretary of treasuries have to come from somewhere. how did a guy like soros learn global markets?
First of all all the current economists are terrible so don't take them as a good gauge. But I meant working experience or just watching the markets. Reading a lot helps and there is some good stuff out there. If you go to think tanks they have free material you can download and read. When you are at university you read a degree so it is the same minus the seminars and the lectures which are a talin about the material you are meant to read. Read some books. Watch the markets and discuss economic topics on forums and read the papers they link. You will learn more reading and discussing economics here in six months then you would in a hole degree in my opinion. Engage in the topics here and ask people questions if you don't understand it. Even if they don't answer they will send you links in most cases. ET in itself is a great learning aid and you have some good lecturers here who have experience. Does that help?
FYI Several econ courses at Yale are now free and online.... http://oyc.yale.edu/economics The Financial Theory class by Geanakoplos is very interesting as he quit teaching to start a hedge fund, blew-up, and now back teaching again. Some great insights on markets and econ that you would not usually find for free. The yale Game Theory might also be helpful for a trader. Also some good classes at https://www.coursera.org/ I am now taking "Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics" a review for me, I am looking to program in R so this class looked helpful. Next class for me is "Computational Investing I" Good luck