Having read a lot of alarmist blog posts lately, I can say categorically that nobody is more qualified to comment on America's financial condition than a Ruby on Rails programmer who read Freakonomics.

Social media is starting to get bored with the economy and the government's $700 billion bailout package, likely because bloggers have run out of reasons why the world is about to end. I think what everybody needs is a writing workshop, so in that regard, I am here to help.

Choosing a Topic

There are two basic blog posts you can write about the economy: Oh Fuck We're All Going To Die and People Who Always Had More Money Than You Still Do. The latter is an easy subject and doesn't require a whole lot of preparation. For example, the world will likely be thrilled to hear your hard-hitting commentary about the AIG executives spending more than you make in six years on a weekend retreat. The legitimate journalists of the dying mainstream media will find all the facts; all you need to do is whine.

The first type of basic story, however, is a thinking man's blog post. This is where you can show us all what you learned by reading the Cliff's Notes for The Wealth of Nations and skimming the Wikipedia page on collateralized debt obligations.

Naturally, this brings us to the second point.

You Don't Need To Understand It To Make It Sound Scary

The first step to sounding like you know what you're talking about is to use big numbers. Since we've all become numb to amounts in the seven-hundred-billion range, you're going to have to think bigger: trillions, tens of trillions, that sort of thing. Combine your very big number with something that is ill understood by the general population and you've got a recipe for pageviews, my friend. Let's see an example:

This is how F-ed we are. Outstanding credit default swaps worth more than the Global GDP. $700 billion is a drop in the bucket on $54 TRILLION.

-- headline, reddit.com

Well gee, that sure sounds like something I should be afraid of. What products or services can I buy to help me alleviate such fear? I had best click the link and find out.

After you've planted the very large number with a complex financial instrument, you should give a high-level overview of what that instrument is, because the intricacies that would let your reader decide for himself are much too hard. Your readers didn't go to school so they could attempt rational thought, they went to school so that you can tell them what they need to be afraid of.

That, and you don't have a fucking clue, either.

Once you're done sweating the reader down, it's time for your disclaimer.

Don't Blame Me, I'm Just A Writer

You can never end an Oh Fuck We're All Going To Die on a down note. You need to give the reader some glimmer of hope. This can be done one of two ways: the professorial statement or the unsettling reassurance. Both of these endings will absolve you of responsibility for not knowing what you're talking about.

Professorial statements can turn your scaremongering into wisdom. Your best bet here is to quote someone else, for example:

He added what was perhaps the most salient point: "I hope this lesson will be the beginning of a larger lesson: The economics of competition and greed does not serve us well."

-- Some Douchebag, Alternet.org

This ending shifts the burden of proof to the expert you've been pulling quotes from for the past six hundred words. Bonus points for the anti-free-market message.

The unsettling reassurance, on the other hand, lets the reader know that maybe things won't be as bad as you say they will, but only if such-and-such a group of people do such-and-such a thing. This is the ideal time to fire up the political undertones.

The fiscal costs of these actions will be large but the economic and fiscal costs of inaction would be of a much larger and severe magnitude. Thus, the time to act is now as all the policy officials of the world are meeting this weekend in Washington at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings.

-- Guy with a Foreign Sounding Name, The Huffington Post

This one saves your ass because the responsibility now falls on such-and-such a group of people. If they don't follow your advice and things go to shit, it's their fault. If they do follow your advice and things still go to shit, then they probably missed some minute yet critical detail of your elaborate plan.

Now your reader has forgotten that you're completely full of it, and will leave feeling either educated or called to action.

Just don't let them forget to click the AdSense on the way out.