April 09, 2009

People looking for clarity during the current economic downturn are turning increasingly to financial blogs.Financial bloggers - who run the gamut from economists to money managers to former public officials - have spewed instant analysis and criticism of the steps the government has taken during this economic crisis. From the first proposed Troubled Assets Relief Program to the current Public-Private Investment Program, bloggers have questioned the viability of these plans and how they'll fix banks balance sheets in order to pave the road to recovery.

While bloggers sometimes get bad reputations for ranting and raving from the sidelines, it's hard to question the credentials of some renowned bloggers, such as Princeton economist Paul Krugman, last year's Nobel Prize winner, and the notoriously bearish New York University economist Nouriel Roubini."Blogs have very much become a meritocracy," says Barry Ritholtz, chief executive at quantitative-research firm FusionIQ and author of "The Big Picture" blog. "You just have to look a little harder and work more diligently to find who's worth reading."