Boston Globe: So, you want to save the economy?

The blogs offer a rolling crash course in economics as authoritative as any textbook, but far more accessible. It's a conversation that's simultaneously esoteric and irreverent, combining technical discussions of liquidity traps and yield curves with profane putdowns and heckling headlines. In the process, the bloggers have helped to democratize policy making, throwing open the doors on the messy business of everything from declaring a recession to structuring the most expensive government bailout in history. The bloggers included some of the nation's top academic economists, such as Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, and Tyler Cowen, along with a host of financial-industry insiders who actually knew a great deal about credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and all the other...