Current events:
- Introduction to the Greek crisis – John Green
- The European debt crisis visualized – Bloomberg video
- Debt crisis explained in 2010 -John Green, 4 min
Macro basics: use study videos on Victoria’s Macro Principles website to review the definitions of following concepts: GDP, business cycles, economic growth, unemployment, inflation, fiscal policy, public deft, government budget deficit, money, tools of monetary policy, exchange rates, exports and imports.
Discussion questions:
1. Please write a short paragraph introducing yourself – you can include any information which you would like to share with the others on this course. Have you ever lived in an economy that is undergoing a crisis? Please share your thoughts – what impact did the crisis have on people and cities?
2. According to John Green’s videos, sometimes a country’s government borrows a lot and the country grow prosperous. At other times and in other countries high debt leads to a default or a crisis. How do you explain this paradox? Can you think of things that your country’s government could spend borrowed money on right now that would actually increase government revenues in the future?
- How do governments conduct fiscal policy? How can it be used to stimulate an economy?
- What do we mean by monetary policy and how do governments implement it in recession?
- How does currency appreciation and depreciation affect exports and imports?
Multiple choice on basic macro concepts (some questions above can be covered in this quiz and removed) – this quiz in Moodle will test your knowledge of the basic concepts.