Where can I get honest information about our economy?

I'm 63 y/o with a high school education. I have come to accept that the capitalist system, with honest oversight from the government, is that best of all possible systems. But where do I get just honest, clear information about our current economic situation? There's finger pointing in all directions as, for example, on the hight cost of gasoline. But who is really to blame?(I don't mean "blame" in the moral sense) Speculators, China and India, our own wastful habits? Where can I read up on this subject and others like it?


Where can I get just honest analysis without having to felter out either left or right wing bias?


Can anyone suggest books, web-sites, where I can get information that is not too technical yet helps me understand the economic world we now live in? I'd like to learn about Wall Street too. What does "buying short" (if that's the proper term) mean? How in the world can you make money when the stock goes down??


Thank you one and all.


Tony|||One interesting source for information about the American Economy is the magazine "The Economist". Its published out of the UK and is generally well regarded by the economists as a thoughtful publication.





The other idea I would recommend is to do something I call, for lack of a better term, triangulation. I borrow it from mapping and geometry, but the notion is to find a few sources that seem to have at least a reliable bias to their coverage, making sure that you pick something on the left, something on the right, and something as close to the center as you can find. In TV you might use MSNBC on the left, FOX on the right, and CNN in the middle. For newspapers try the New York times on the left, the wall street journal on the right and perhaps a regional or local paper if you can find one that is more centrist.





The idea with both examples is to follow an issue of interest on all three sources, noting the differences in how the facts and the analysis are presented. You'll tend to get a better picture of what might really be going on by looking at the confluence of all three sources.





If you don't have the time to do something that extensive, just try to find the most moderate, balanced treatments you can find.





You can develop a skill for spotting disingenuous reporting or media bias over time, even by just listening or reading carefully to one source. People with ulterior motives in their reporting tend to reveal it in how they cover a story.





Even one news outlet will often offer competing takes on a story. MSNBC for example, primarily a left leaning outlet, does offer counter programming, such as Joe Scarboroughs morning talk show "Morning Jo" If you watch that, plus Chris Matthews and whatever you can find from Tim Russert, you can get a left center, to center take on things by interpolating the combination.





MSNBC also uses Pat Buchanen a lot as a counter point commentator and he is pretty good, although he tends to be out of the mainstream on trade and nationalism, even from the perspective of the right. Still, he's been around a long time and has a great persona for spirited but digestable debate.





So MSNBS is all about politics these days, and you want more on economics. You can use the same method with any programming sources you find that you like, but you have to stick with it long enough to figure out who is leaning which way in their coverage and bias.





You are thinking of selling short. That is when you agree today to sell someone a stock in the future that you don't yet own. you are betting that the stock will cost you less in the future. the person accepting the contract with you thinks the opposite or they wouldn't do the deal. So you either have different needs and motivations, or different information, or have done a different kind of analysis to come up with your difference of opinion on the future value of the stock.





the market price at equilibrium, in a quiet time, tends to reflect the collective wisdom of the entire investment community. Obviously some people have more interest and more knowledge about a particular company than everyone as a whole. So its not unusual to be in a position to have a better idea than the entire community of investors as a whole, about stocks for companies that are not large enough to attract the attention of the multitude of professional stock analysts. Often these are called small cap stocks, short for companies with smaller capitalization, or a modest amount of stock in the marketplace. the big investors can't bother to think about and establish positions in these companies, but the small investor can and does.





I'm not a good source for how to go about picking individual stocks, but there are tons of folks out there who are.





But that is how you make money when you think the stock is going down. you sell stock today, that you don't yet own, under a contract that requires you to deliver it at a specified date in the future. I think most of the on-line systems like Ameritrade or Etrade etc will allow you to do that, at least once you have established an account and funded it.





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