The Best Alternative Financial Blogs

So what are the best alternative finance and economic blogs out there?

To assemble our list, we polled our friends, our sources, and our followers on Twitter. We excluded many of the sites we really enjoy because they are associated with major media organizations. So no Felix Salmon, FT Alphaville, or DealBook.

These are the sites that have struck out on their own, untethered to the “mainstream media.” Some of them — like Business Insider or Minyanville — have become so successful that we almost disqualified them as being too mainstream.

On our list you’ll find some representatives of the old school, some of the new school, and hopefully a few that are new to you. There are liberal fraud-busters, Austrian economics free-marketeers, and jaded market cynics on our list.

And now, here’s the best of the web for 2012.

By John Carney
Posted 27 January 2012

We still can’t let a day go by without checking on the new ways Bess Levinhas discovered to hurl hilarious bile at the news. She’s what Jon Stewart would be if Jon Stewart were a dirty-talking Wall Street tabloid reporter. Plus, she’s got the best hedge-fund sources in the business.

It has grown a lot since the days when it was just a finance and technology site. Still central to success is the tireless warp-speed blogging of Joe Weisenthal.

When I first started blogging about Wall Street, a wise sage once said that you would have to be a paranoid Russian poet to understand global finance. ZeroHedgeproves the truth of this every day. It’s the first and last stop of the day for many traders.

Economics professor Scott Sumner claims he’s “not a natural blogger,” yet his blogalmost single-handedly pushed the idea of basing monetary policy around nominal gross domestic product — that is, economic growth without stripping out inflation — right to the center of the economic debate. Even U.S. Federal Reserve governors are talking about the idea these days.

For as long as anyone can remember, Michael Shedlock’s websitehas been a must-read. When many people were predicting runaway inflation and a declining dollar, “Mish” correctly called deflation and the end to the long “flight from the dollar.”

Edward Harrison’s “Credit Writedowns”boasts one of the best stables of columnists around. Harrison’s unconventional approach to economics — one part Austrian, one part Modern Monetary Theory, and four parts original Harrisonism — makes it a real standout. I won’t bother trying to explain it all right here. Just go check out the site.

Charles Hugh Smith isn’t a household name...yet. Even a lot of avid blog readers I talk to haven’t heard of him. I suspect that’s about the change. Smith says the “end game” of “extend-and-pretend” will play out in 2012 and 2013. Watch out!

Yves Smith is another of the old stalwarts of financial blogging. A harsh critic of Wall Street who believes that fraud was at the center of the financial crisis, Smith is always a provocative read.

Barry Ritholtz is another “old school” financial blogger. Often cranky, often funny, and always informative. Stop by dailyfor the 10 a.m. ET read.

The best place to go for the latest U.S. economic developments,particularly in the mortgage and real-estate market. It warned early and often how badly mortgage standards had become.

Josh Brown has taken the Internet by storm with his take on markets and the people who make them.

Do you want your global finance commentary mixed in with deep philosophical reflection? This is your spot.

Cullen Roche has done more than anyone to inform the Internet about Modern Monetary Theory, but he’s much more than a publicist for MMT.

His daily takeon the markets is highly informative and infused with a burning enthusiasm for figuring out that all-important question: What’s next?

This is where we go to figure out what’s going on in Europe.

The one stop shop for everything Austrian, free-market and Ludwig von Mises related.

Todd Harrison's powerhouse sitefirst came to our attention years ago because of the Bull and Bear cartoons, but it has developed into a powerhouse of market info perfectly suited to the retail investor.

Another of the “old school” financial blogs. Abnormal Returnsmade its name as the best link blog in finance. If you need a quick guide to the smartest things on the web each day, Abnormal Returns will point you there.

This one is not on most people’s reading list yet. Its name is pretty self-explanatory. In these days of sovereign debt crises and record-setting bankruptcies, you really do need a guideto the world of distressed debt.