Greg Ip's "The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World"

This is an fast and easy survey of practical economics, the realities of how the economic system actually works. No theory here. No academics. This covers specifics about the US system of government economic statistics, business accounting, and financial reporting. You won't come away stunned with new ideas. It will help you to review basic vocabulary and concepts that describe economic activity as it actually is practiced.

Here's a sample from the book:

A hotel whose occupancy suddenly rises to 95 percent from 80 percent will eventually add rooms, but will first simply charge more. Similarly, if occupancy falls, the hotel may eventually close. But first, it will simply charge less. The difference between actual gross domestic product (GDP) and potential GDP is the output gap, which you could think of as a vacancy rate for the entire economy. Inflation always falls after recessions becasue the output gap is so large: hotels and office buildings are empty, factories are idel, and the unemployed are everywhere.

These are basic facts that those peddlers of doom, those who "forecast" hyperinflation because the US government is running a sizeable deficit, seem not to know or understand. The book teaches terminology, but also gives you the basics to analyze what passes for "economic" argument in the US.

And here is one close to my heart because it looks at debt:

Stocks are simple and glamorous. ... debt is complicated and dull, usually relegated to the inner pages of the financial papers. Yet it matters more to the economy. Most companies don't issue stock; they are privately held. Households and governments don't issue stocks at all. At the end of 2009, all the stocks in the United States were worth about $20 trillion. All debt was equal to about $52 trillion of which households owed $14 trillion; businesses, $11 trillion; financial institutions, $16 trillion; and governments, $10 trillion. This means that an interruption in the supply of credit hurts a lot more parts of the economy than a fall in the stock market.

Too bad the fanatics in the Republican party are unaware of this simple fact. Their grandstanding about refusing to increase the credit limit on the US government is dangerous politics, but they are too stupid to realize it.

Looking at the above, it puts all the hullabaloo over federal government debt into perspective. It is swamped by the the private debt (households, businesses, and financial institutions). It is worrisome that the government debt now stands at 14.26 trillion, but this is understandable in the midst of a very severe recession. Revenues fall and expenditures go up, so debt grows. The real question is whether government can bring budgets into balance during the next boom, not whether the government can eliminate it this year or next.

Sadly Republican fanatics, who are screaming that the federal debt needs to be eliminated immediately, misunderstand the role of debt in a modern economy. Debt lubricates commerce. If we went back to "the good old days" where people avoided debt and saved up enough to buy a house for cash, then the economy would be many, many times smaller than the current economy.

This book is a fine antidote to the poisonous "economics" spouted by the right wing radicals in the US. Here you learn the facts. This book doesn't get into politics or look at the ludicrous claims of the right, but it arms with basic facts and an understanding which will allow you to analyze what you hear and separate reasonable debate from fanaticism dressed up as economic patriotism.