My Essential Blogs

by cactus

My Essential Blogs

Most of us who read blogs have blogs we read regularly. Of those, there might be a handful we consider essential. That list is different for each of us, and no doubt changes over time for each of us.

Last week, I learned what my current list of essential blogs is, as I was traveling outside of the country and often had only sporadic access to the net. As I said, I often read quite a few others, but when I had a mere five minutes, this is the list I made sure I perused:

1. Angry Bear. Granted, I’m biased, but I think Rdan has assembled one heck of a crew and made this is into a great destination.
2. TBogg. Not economics at all, at least usually not, but when he’s on, the eponymous TBogg is simply the best writer on the internet if you ask me.
3. Naked Capitalism. I don’t know how Yves Smith does it. I simply don’t.
4. Calculated Risk. Tanta’s death is a loss – few people understood the mortgage banking business and had the talent and the opportunity to write about it to boot. I’m going to miss her writing. But Calculated Risk will one of the best places to get very complex, relevant, and information explained in an easy-to-understand and timely manner because of its founder.

By the way, before going on with this list, I should note that I’ve had occasion to correspond a couple times with Yves Smith and Calculated Risk. Both are as friendly and helpful as they are smart and incisive. I had one exchange with TBogg too, and he was quite friendly too.

Continuing with the list:

5. Krugman. I haven’t always agreed with him (and on occasion, I’ve been right when I disagreed with him), and on occasion I’ve been very critical, but when it comes to being clear, incisive, and cutting to the chase, Krugman is the best.
6. Beat the Press. Dean Baker is very, very good.
7. Marginal Revolution. Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen are smart, informative, and entertaining. And they often come at things from an angle I wasn’t considering.
8. Economist’s View. Mark Thoma is another one man shop who manage to produce way more than I can imagine a person producing. And his daily links are excellent.
9. Eschaton. Atrios’ unashamedly liberal news blog is a great round-up of the days events.
10. Washington Monthly’s Political Animal. This was a great blog when Kevin Drum ran it. Somehow, its even better now – Hilzoy and Steven Benen make this, in my opinion, the best single source for political analysis on the web.

So there’s my essential list. I try to read more blogs than that most days, and many of the ones I read have a different bias. But these are the ones I read when that’s all I have time for. What’s your list?

The loss of Tanta is a blow to the blogosphere, but even by himself CR does one heck of a job.
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by cactus