Join a variety of economic and finance discussions.
Earth Day. A day to inspire awareness about the environment close to home and around the globe. Awareness, however, has turned into opportunity. Nothing wrong with opportunity, but when those participating in the free market enterprise cry foul over the LACK of sales you know some people have forgotten the purpose of ‘Earth Day’.
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With the rise and fall of some major corporations (think GM and Chrysler for one), it bears to know some terms in the economics of labour. Here are some for your reading pleasure.
Marginalist Controversy: Criticism of neoclassical labour theorist citing model inaccuracies. Various variables such as measure fundamental measurements such as MC, MR, elasticity of demand were not quantifiable by managers and owners. Also suggest small competitive firms would have the incentive and abilities to restrict interests in favour of profit maximizing initiatives. Sometime owners wished to max profits yet difficult to induce managers to follow suit. Other reasons such as desire to limit profits in favour of aggressive expansion within a particular industry or focus to ward off competition are other examples of firms unable or unwilling to focus on maximising profits.
DON’T say the B-word. What caused this stigma I have no idea, but one thing is for certain, people who don’t know how to handle their money in the most basic ways know one thing for sure, don’t tell me to ‘budget’.
The fact of the matter is this, the basics of budgeting, simply taking all of your income in and calculating expenses going out to arrive at your (hopefully) positive balance, remain an integral component of basic money management. Whether you’re a youth, or just ready to take control of your own money, understanding where you money goes is crucial.
Here is a brief article from a few years back that provides some old and some newer information pertaining to China’s unwillingness to revaluate their currency and their foreign policy to continue purchasing American assets.
China, prior to the credit crunch, was/is on fire and they want everything American from oil to government bonds. The question, are they too hot? This article addresses some concepts we’ve explored in class, largely the Chinese governments unwillingness to slow down economic growth by either raising interest rates or revaluating the currency.
The articles comments on the continued growth of the economy at a rate many in China suggest is sustainable. 2004 GDP growth was the greatest in 8 years reaching 9.5% Continue reading this article »
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/01/index.htm
Including nice graphs.
Following up from our introduction to economics/macroeconomics article, this post talks about ‘self-interest’ and maximizing over a set of preferences subject to constraints.
Let’s start off with some examples, but first, the tools we’ll need (some images used because it’s a bit tough to get the right characters).
Economics: The Study of how society deals with scarcity.
Here is a brief article on the introductory components of any economy with a macroeconomic slant.
In the economy we expect to find these four components: resource endowment, technology, preference, institutions.
Some key terms that you should be aware of include:
Picking up where we left off from the first part of this article, remember, pay off debts which includes your mortgage. A good strategy for this room of the house is to take on a minimal amount of fixed debt. A person’s ability to manage this aspect of their finances will impact their whole financial future. Remember: there is bad debt, and in some cases good debt. Be smart because much of easily accumulated and accessible debt is bad debt!
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I am sure that none of you reading this would think that building a house by beginning with the roof would be a great idea. In fact it would be impossible. The roof would need support. Let’s use the analogy of a house to see the elements of a financial plan and their priorities.
Every house starts with a foundation. The foundation of financial success is as follows:
