Plain Sense Economics

John Maynard Keynes’ prescription for government intervention to stimulate demand is getting more play in the media and salons these days. There is still some strong, insightful resistance to pure Keynesian policy directions, but his ideas are having something of a renaissance now that the Federal Reserve has lowered its target interest rate as far [...]

In our macroeconomics class yesterday we were talking about the relative effectiveness of different stimulus strategies. When we get to fiscal policy and Keynesian policies we will explore how an increase in government spending can, in theory, result in increases in GDP by several multiples. Also in this theoretical discussion we’ll see how tax cuts [...]

This may cause us to scratch our heads about the presence of a recession, but Casey Mulligan’s post in the New York Times Economix has some interesting points about gross domestic product. It is simple enough to be worth reading by principles of economics students.
The opening paragraph:
When measured in terms of financial gyrations and national [...]

President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address – January 20, 2009 – excerpt:
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control, [...]

…we continue our look at the current economic recession and the various solutions proposed to turn things around…
As noted earlier, the general preference, among economists, is to let the Federal Reserve steer our economic ship, through its use of monetary policy tools. These days, however, the consensus seems to be that monetary policy alone will [...]

From Gary Varvel of the Indianapolis Star:
The explanation behind this cartoon is that our Social Security works on a system where workers and employers make payments into the social security trust fund, and withdrawals are made to pay for retiree benefits. Individual workers or retirees don’t have their own “account” in social security. As long [...]

Today is the first day of the Winter Term here at Southern Oregon University. I’ll be directing students from my Principles of Macro and Micro classes to this blog as a resource. This seems like a good time to go over the blog’s goals and how to use it.
Goals
Nothing lofty here – just a desire [...]