>what's happening in the United States now, I think it's crucial to have a good understanding of the economy

I aver its not crucial to understand economics. It is crucial to understand finance. This view was hammered into us repeatedly at the University of Chicago.

The seminal paper, by Mr. Larry Summers, on the distinction: http://m.blog.hu/el/eltecon/file/summers_ketchup%5B1%5D.pdf or on jstor ( http://www.jstor.org/pss/2327785 )

You need to know how to add. You don't need to know about the well-ordering principle. I say this as a math major who would love it if everyone knew why add works in an integral field( ie. Peano arithmetic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_Arithmetic#Arithmetic ).

To quote my professor, there's 2 big portions to econ - the narrative portion and the arithmetic portion. The first is mostly storytelling. Granted, there's some consensus around the arc of that story ( more consensus in micro-econ than in macro-econ ), but its still a story. The second completely ignores the story. It just says if debt is what it is, ie. some x, and inflation is y, what should the CDS be priced at ? ie. if CDS = f(x,y) what should that f look like ?

Turns out that question is much more useful and actionable than the story-telling aspect. If somebody told you the Dow fell by 500 points, its more useful ( in a utilitarian sense ) to know what you should do with your personal portfolio, than to know the reasons for Dow's fall (assuming that set of reasons are even knowable). You might think the causation would be useful. It is, to a very small extent, but the actionable portion ie. what you must do, can be understood much more efficiently by simply focusing on the prices of individual instruments that characterize market indices, derivatives on those indices, ETFs that make a play on debt, inflation etc. The fact that there were 10,300 puts at 113 strike on the August DIA yesterday is more useful than what any individual economist thinks. It tells you that the short term consensus view of Dow is 113*100 = 11300 ...the trend is down-sloping in the short term.

Ironically, Summers said finance guys were mere ketchup economists. The dept. of Ketchup pays ketchup economists huge salaries so they could calculate the price of 2 quarts of ketchup if the market told them the price of 1 quart. Whereas "real economists" were engaged in doing research on why a quart of ketchup was priced the way it was ie. due to consumer wages, tomato prices, cost of harvesting tomato, soil conditions etc.

Paraphrasing Summers "Ketchup economists reject research of the ketchup market. They believe prices of ketchup are the only hard data worth studying". You may not agree with any of this - but I do urge you to read that paper. Its had a huge influence on the asset pricing community.

A meta-comment on the answers to this question: For various reasons, a disproportionate number of HN commenters are fans of "Austrian School" economics. You'll see links to papers from mises.org, books by Murray Rothbard, etc. Without passing judgment on any of this work, if you're new to economics it would probably be helpful for you to understand that it's outside the mainstream.

To answer your question more directly (although only partially): Wikipedia is quite good on the major economic concepts and figures. I'd imagine that the Wikipedia article on any of the subjects you mentioned would be a good, brief, thoroughly hyperlinked starting point. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation, for example.

Tough question to answer, since economists don't fully understand economics yet either, and still get it wrong (how many professional economists besides Roubini foresaw and warned of the financial crisis again?).

Some of the most important bits of foundational knowledge I've accumulated over the years:

1. The Industrial Revolution demonstrated to humanity that wealth could be created from thin air, on a large scale, and hence civilizations had an alternative to stealing it from each other. There are basically two ways of creating wealth:

-1) Harvest raw materials, apply labor, capital, and innovation to convert them into finished products worth more than the sum of their parts. The diff between what it cost to make the product and what you sell it for is the wealth you've created out of thin air (more commonly known as profit). It's why manufacturing is important.

We used to take hundreds of dollars worth of wood and iron and turn it into thousands of dollars worth of sailing ships. Now we take hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sand, aluminum, and copper and turn it billions of dollars worth of microchips.

-2) Provide a service that saves other people time and/or money. Time & money = wealth. With the time/money saved, they can either do more of #1 or #2, invest it, spend it in leisure, or whatever else is of value. More commonly known as specialization.

Most things are combinations of the two - products that save time or money (web apps, cars, etc.), or services that reduce the cost of #1 or increase its final value.

2. In a fiat currency system, the underlying of everything is interest rates, and the underlying of interest rates is the risk-free rate of return. If you only watch one single data point, the risk-free rate is the most important. When it moves, everything moves (since all other interest rates are indexed off of it). Normally the risk-free rate is considered to be US Treasuries, but over the past few years there's been thought amongst some actuaries, economists, traders, etc. whether it's not something else, like a composite of US Treasuries and LIBOR, or something else. But just be aware that there is a concept of a baseline interest rate upon which all other interest rates in the economy are indexed on, and even tiny movements in the baseline rate have major ramifications for the entire rest of the economy.

3. Incentives matter. One of the things that all economists across all schools of thought agree on. One good article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/what-weve-learn.... Plenty more if you google the phrase.

4. Fractional reserve banking. Many people misunderstand how this works, so I'll preface by saying that individual banks cannot create money. Eg, an individual bank cannot loan out more than it has in deposits. If a bank has $100 in deposits, and the Federal Reserve sets the reserve ratio at 10%, the bank must keep 10% in reserve, eg it cannot loan out more than $90 of its $100. But, the banking system can essentially create money, or multiply it, based on the fractional reserve ratio and the money multiplier. Wikipedia has a good table that demonstrates how this works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier#Table

4. On a meta level, don't subscribe to one economic school or another, rather learn and understand them all, where and why they disagree, but don't get emotionally invested in any one of them. I see lots of Austrians in this thread and a Keynesian or two. Listen and understand, don't believe. Economics is the study of one of the most complex, dynamic, and intractable systems we know of, and no school has it completely right yet, all are subject to further revision.

5. In that vein, read Benoit Mandelbrot's The (Mis)Behavior of Markets for a good discourse on why economics is so difficult and intractable. http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/misbehavior_of_markets.html

6. Also read Charlie Munger's Harvard Commencement speech, "On the Psychology of Human Misjudgement", for a reminder of why not to get emotionally invested in one school of econ, or worldview, or religion for that matter. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=munger%20psychology%20of%20human%2...

I can think of more, but that's enough for now, hope it helps a little.

The federal reserve banks have some good resources, but I would go through these in this order:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/default.htm >> http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pf.htm

http://www.khanacademy.org/#current-economics >> http://www.khanacademy.org/#banking-and-money

http://research.stlouisfed.org/

To qualify this, I do have a B.S. degree in Econ.

[ADDED]: An important component of risk analysis is political risk (but it is often overlooked in discussions dealing with the U.S. due to the perception that it is most stable alternative). There is a fine Wikipedia article that discusses this, and in light of the recent downgrade, may help explain things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_risk

I would suggest Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics.He also has a blog here http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/

Keep in mind your question is quite broad like asking how to get started into programming.

You will get conflicting opinions on economic models and theories like you would on programming languages and algorithms.

The mainstream press provides brutally inaccurate opinion and talking points regarding economics. Completely ignore those articles and look into some expert talks like the npr posts recommended.

Study how the federal reserve decides to move interest rates - it is the post important macroecon process.

Accessible read on banking: http://mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofbanking.pdf

I have always found the "back stories" on how/why our economy came into existence to be "pulled out of thin air". I just started reading this new book: http://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1933633867 I'm only about 1/3 the way into it, but so far impressed.

My apps http://cascadesoft.net/EconomyApp.aspx (iPhone, iPad, Windows PC) provide a snapshot of the US economy. The iPad and iPhone apps were once ranked #1 on Apple's top charts for the Finance category.

Obviously, I can't claim to be entirely objective in this matter, but I think that the app is a great resource for anyone who wants to understand the US economy.

Two more sites: I use http://economistsview.typepad.com/ to get a summary of opinions and links to other sources, and I understand there are now some finance videos/courses at http://khanacadmey.org under the Banking/Money section (I haven't vetted them yet).

"Begg, Dornbusch and Fisher" for a one-volume treatise on Economics. That was my Economics 101 book last century, but constantly updated and revised the recent editions are still topical and clearly explained

Dornbusch and Fisher also publish a standard one-volume treatise on MacroEconomics which might be a better fit for your country-level requirements.

I like Price Theory by David D. Friedman (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC...) and Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (http://mises.org/resources/3250).

"Economics in One Lesson" by Hazlitt is digestible, a quick read, and gets to the heart of a lot of issues, IMO.

Semi-related comment but...we need a HN-like site for Economics. I believe there was something like that before, but I'm not sure what happened to it.

Anyone interested in starting something like that on the side as a hobby?

There is a wealth of articles, free (good!) books, etc. at http://www.mises.org/, home of Austrian economics online.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ has really awesome summaries of key economic data and development.

Wealth of Nations, seriously. Over two hundred years ago Adam Smith laid out the important concepts.

Personally, I really like Austrians.

Mises.org is a good place to start in that regard.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/ is great for understanding what's going on right now

There was a fantastic 1980 PBS (video) series called Free to Choose, by Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose. It's available for free viewing here: http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/

Once you get into economics, you will like this blog: http://marginalrevolution.com/

Lewrockwell.com is a correlary to Mises.org. The focus there is on non-technical commentary, where LvMI is more scholarly.

There are thousands of media files, audio, video, and e-book, on every imaginable topic. My first recommendation would be to read the best intro to "intuitive economics" ever: Henry Hazlitt's "ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON" Here's an introduction to it http://mises.org/daily/3000