Not claiming to be an expert. However, the trick to understanding economy on a basic level is to disregard money. Money is quite a distraction. You have to look at goods and services- how much is being produced, by who, and where is it going. Money is just a symbol. If you hear an economist obsessing over currencies and not talking about real things, then it really does seem like voodoo.

Here's a link:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11551769

It's an overview of the two candidates' plans from a general economist's view. The verdict: Obama's plans are better for most people, McCain's are better for rich people.

At this point of the game (8 years of Bush), Obama is the best for improving my personal economy. After all there is no other economy other than mine.

I made money off Bush in the early days then bailed before his economy bailed on me. As Obama repairs the last four years of damage, I will make money off him. This too will shift at which point I will also shift my monies.

That's what makes me an expert, I manage to stay ahead of the presidents financial mistakes.

Hi there...
When the war of Iraq was declared...I frankly didn’t need the US President to give me any exotic reason to depose a serial mass murderer like sadam and guarantee more stability in a region populated by people that still live in the middle ages(they even talk about the crusades like it was yesterday) and thus its one of the most instable regions of the world, whose our insatiable thirst for oil, has stupidly transformed into the most important one for the stability of economies and countries all over the world.

The price for cheap oil is a lot of blood. People don’t like to talk about it, don’t like to hear it, same thing as that guy on The Island said…just because people like hamburgers doesn’t mean they want to meet the cow. They want to use cars and buy lots of stuff and don’t want to think that lifestyle has an impact. But it has. Everytime you buy something it does…we can no longer have the benefit of a clear conscience and live in opulence.
So I though well, I wont be so cynic as to criticise bush for declaring war upon a country to maintain oil cheap. I want to use my computer and buy stuff I don’t need and so on.

About two years latter, I was cheeking wikipedia for a cool vehicle designed to protect the troops from home made bombs…and investigating a bit I realised (the guys were very open about it which I found amazing) that force protection, that’s the company’s name, had more than 4x their benefits from contracts to produce the new type of vehicles the army demanded to lower casualty rates. Apparently a selected group of companies has made millions with the war, while the government has fallen into huge debt to pay for the huge costs of maintaining troops abroad and the purchase of ordinance and new material.

The region is less stable than ever, and partly due to that (the real reason is the global demand for oil and the fact we have reached the top of the curve of production, and that means every barrel of oil will cost more and more to extract) oil prices have sky rocketed.

So in effect, a bunch of guys privatised the huge benefits they got from the war, while the huge losses where socialised across the whole world. That capitalism at its best. That is what is behind all that marketing and media that turns us into idiots so we accept that as a good and fair system.

Given that the future president will inherit this state of affairs (oil is in every industrial process, in every transport in everything it influences everything in the economy, all the growth of XX century and progress was due to the fact that oil was cheap) I don’t think he will be able to do anything other than cut public spending and make speeches of unfounded optimism. I’ve seen a lot of politicians do badly when the economy was good, but never in history one did good with a bad economy.

In the past solution for crisis came from unexpected finding of oil resources, expending huge sums in armaments and public works or persuading OPEP to lower the price of oil to keep economies madly dependent on oil afloat. Neither of these options will work now,(expending huge sums in armaments produced WWII so we can hardly called that a good solution to the crisis) so I don’t think this or that politician will make any difference other than as scott said motivate people or not, although I cant believe people after all that has happened in the past can be inspired by politicians and leaders.

Today they just said in my country that anyone that is under 35 wont get the public pension fund that we pay in taxes during our whole working life (we still pay it). One would think that people would get a shotgun and assault the congress to demand what those bastards have done with all that money. At least get some cooking ware and do noise in front of the tv like in argentina. But Do they? nope. Everyone is talking about the soccer Eurocup, planing their summer hollydays...I havent heard a soul talking about the pensions, which in my country is a right that needed years of figthing to achieve. We have the politicians and the system we deserve. Do you really think one or the other will make a difference? They are all the same.

The problem is that real economists have done the math, and the answer doesn't align with either political party. See their report at:

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/

The members are:

Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University;
François Bourguignon, Paris School of Economics and former World Bank chief economist;
Finn E. Kydland, University of California, Santa Barbara (Nobel laureate);
Robert Mundell, Columbia University in New York (Nobel laureate);
Douglass C North, Washington University in St. Louis (Nobel laureate);
Thomas Schelling, University of Maryland (Nobel laureate);
Vernon L Smith, Chapman University (Nobel laureate);
Nancy Stokey, University of Chicago.

Five Nobel prizes, and they advocate completely different things than either party. What could this mean? I guess it means that the inDUHviduals that are important to politicians, aka voters, don't know beans about the economy. They say "the economy is important" when they mean "I want more money". These are not the same thing, at all. Politicians promise to do things that can be interpreted as "You will get more money", and call it "making the economy better". These promises are usually not met for two reasons: 1) they are impossible; or 2) the economy reallocates resources to undo the damage caused by misguided politicians.

The only reason we have "expert" economists is that people want to fool themselves into thinking that someone knows what is going on. Take a hard look at the data; when predicting what will happen with the economy, the experts do no better than random chance. It's a scam on the scale of fortune tellers and psychics (another couple of examples of fooling ourselves into thinking that someone knows what is going on, by the way). The only difference is the channel and the time of day that they are shown.

Here's a good place to start:
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Believe-Everything-You-Think/dp/1591024080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213799141&sr=8-1

If you laid all economists in the world end to end, they wouldn't reach a conclusion. Don't know who first said that, but it comes to mind now.

I'm no expert. I was born in 1975 so the first president I have any memory of is that Reagan fella. So I recall only 4 presidents. 3 of which were Republicans who thought that spending lots of money while cutting taxes on the rich and creating multi trillion dollar debts was good economic policy. The one democrat, however, managed to drive down the debt, cut government spending, leave office with a budget surplus, and provide a bit of relief for the poor and middle class.

So for economics I'm thinking the guy who isn't a Republican is the better bet.

The amazing Kreskin

I'm an expert on politics because I've got this theory. When the economic is growing and things are looking good, Americans vote republican. When the economy is in stagnation or worse, people vote democratic (in other countries too). I haven't tested my theory properly, but looking at the economy Obama will win this thing easily.

Not being American, I have even less idea who would be best.

What I do know is that, whoever wins, when the economy goes !$%*!$%* the president will either blame the previous administration, or state that it is factors beyond his control. The opposition will say it's his fault.

In Britain, when Gordon Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer (minister in charge of government finance and the economy) he spent years taking credit for the stable economy that he inherited from the previous administration. Now it's going !$%*!$% he can't blame the previous administration (since he was in charge of it), so he's opting for the "beyond my control" arguement.

I don't believe either story. When things were going well it was a combination of inheriting a good situation, and (more importantly) a global good situation that had nothing to do with him. However, since he used the good times to increase spending, increase tax, increase government borrowing, and encourage the population to increase personal borrowing massively (rather than repaying the national debt and putting some money aside), now the faeces is flying from the fan there is no slack in the system to cope with it. I'd agree with the "beyond my control" statement, as there's not much he can do about it now, but that doesn't make it not his fault.

Oh, and to answer one of Scott's questions, what qualifies me to spout my views? Not much, honestly, beyond being pretty intuative at Maths, making a point of reading the news from the (apparently) more impartial sources available, and draw my own conclusions. I've never studied economics.

It would seem to me, if you are an independent economist, and you decide to favor Obama, you become an Obama economist. Likewise for McCain. It would seem, therefore, that whoever has the most economists wins.

Good economics is about being able to adapt your viewpoint in light of new information. However voters seem to vote for the guy who has a singular entrenched worldview - I guess they like their leaders to appear strong and certain. Hmmmm, it seems like I'm saying that in general you should vote for a weak guy no-one thinks has a hope.

Clearly Obama would be better for the economy because he's a better person and McCain is a right wing republican. Why am I an expert on economics? I did macroeconomics 1 and prices and markets 1 in uni and got a high distinction for both. I don't need any more education on the subject. The rest is opinion.

Bob Barr has the best plan for the economy.

His plan can best be summed up as "McCain and Obama support ethanol and are against drilling in anwar so their plans are wrong."

I don't have to be an expert on economics to see that ethanol is a problem and Anwar is a good idea. The problem is that the American educational system has been slowly degraded by teachers' unions fighting to keep incompetent teachers "teaching." Now, after decades and decades of this, the American people are voting in idiots that believe the same crap they do.

Let's be honest, if it wasn't for Hitler, how many Americans would know where Europe is?

If I had to choose between the ones that will win, I'd pick Obama. This is because no matter who wins, they're going to screw up the economy. And the idiot American people are going to blame the party of that candidate and two years from now will vote the other party into congress. If Obama wins, after two years of economic hell, the American people will vote back in the Republicans, who in congress, have a much better economic track record than, say, the Democrats.

So I say Obama so in two years the Republicans have congress again.

As somebody said, "If you spend thirteen minutes a year thinking about economics (read economists), you've wasted ten minutes."

At least now you've figured out that there are democrat economists and republican economists. Once politics is involved, you just can't trust the experts to be experts any more. It's the same way with science and global warming. And anything anybody tells you about the war on terrorism.

*A particular sentence from the article made me dizzy...this completed the circle of discombobulation (i always wanted to use that word):
"Wall Street may like McCain but it is betting on the Democratic senator from Illinois."

Economists at Reuters summit tipped towards McCain:

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1334411920080615

A particular sentence from the article made me completed the circle of discombobulation (i always wanted to use that word):
"Wall Street may like McCain but it is betting on the Democratic senator from Illinois."