Everything you need to know about economics in 140 characters or less.
Contributed By Yong Yung Shin
When the American subprime mortgage crisis triggered off a global financial meltdown in 2008, news on finance and world economics have been hogging the headlines ever since. For those of us who can’t tell the difference between deviation and derivative and think that a hedge fund has something to do with hedgehogs, this book demystifies that esoteric world and puts a few conversational chips in your pocket for the next time you talk to your banker friends.
As the title tweetonomics suggests, the authors present key economic terms and concepts in digestible, jargon-free 140-character tweets that go straight to the point. Complemented with clever cartoon illustrations, it explains how the economy works, the big economic ideas that shape it, the important thinkers from whom they originate from as well as the role of governments in it all.
For example, a bubble “is the overvaluation of an asset, followed by a sudden devaluation, known as a crash.” Buying a derivative is like placing a bet. “It has no value of its own. If your friend pays you $10 to promise you’ll buy him a beer every time it goes above 90 degrees in July—that’s a derivative.”
It is a collaborative effort by Nic Compton, an author and journalist, Adam Fishwick, a researcher working for the Centre for Global Political Economy and Katie Huston, who has worked as a consultant for the Economic Policy Research Institute of South Africa and written for The Boston Globe as well as the Cape Town Globalist. All three hold an M.A in Global Political Economy—perhaps they were classmates?
tweetonomics appeals to the child in us in order to shed light into a very grown-up topic.
