I saw that Pikkety book displayed in front of a B&N the other day, is it worth a read? I'm afraid I've reached way past the end of my knowledge so I can hardly reply constructively to you, but this is a good way to put it, thanks for the clarification. And, just for the record regarding this How the hell would he know how much of the world's economy is held offshore if it's held offshore and nobody can see it -.-That's the argument here: GDP does not reflect the rules on the ground accurately enough to dictate policy when it comes to government spending. Whether an action is "intermediary" or not is irrelevant - economics is, again, a closed system and pointing out an externality does not invalidate the externality, in invalidates the model.
1) Between 10 and 20% of the world's economy is socked away where we can't see it in offshore accounts
1) Piketty is a slog. It's very dry. You have to care deeply about what he writes about or it will bore the fuck out of you. That said, it's likely to be important to economics the way Nate Silver is important to political polling. Like Silver, Piketty is kind of the first economist to go "you know, we have data. We could look at it rather than guessing." The conclusions he draws are not surprising, but they do put the lie to a lot of ideologically-driven political theory. 2) Economics is a closed system. Theoretically speaking, the amount of money all countries owe should exactly equal the amount of money all countries are owed. After all, neither a borrower nor a lender Mars be, right? however, when you add up current account surpluses for the planet and subtract current account deficits for the planet, you get a discrepancy of about 11%. That's money that goes from "on book" to "off book" as perspective shifts from "loan" to "debt." The only place it can go is offshore.
1) I'll work my way up to it then, I typically start things off with stellar enthusiasm and then let myself get lazy and demotivated. Don't want to waste time starting it and then dropping it. 2) Ho-ly shit. That's awesome!
If economics doesn't truly turn your crank, I'd start with some of the better populist literature. Michael Lewis is an amazingly engaging read, and considering you're hanging out with bank presidents and shit (how'd that go, by the way?) I'd say either Liar's Poker or The Big Short would be really engaging reads for you.
Read 'em both! The former was far better imo. I'm still hanging with 'em! Till the end of July. I should probably get off Hubski. These fuckers have really expensive lunches by the way.