Mr. H.Green

Students Taking Honors Economics in 2009-2010 School Year

 

You have a Summer reading assignment to complete. Pick up the book Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan. You need to have the foward and first two chapters read by the first day of school.  We will have an assessment on the first day of class. We will read the whole book by the end of the semester so go ahead and get it. It is carried at Borders, but they only carry a few copies. I recommend picking it up on Amazon.

Final Grades and Goodbyes

Final grades have now been completely updated.

On a more personal note, I have enjoyed having all of you as students this year. I hope everyone has a great and safe summer as you prepare to move on to bigger and better things. Make good decisions, and swing by and say hey when you come home from college next year.

What Does a Trillion $$ in Government Spending Look Like?

Here is an interesting way of visualizing the cost of the Stimulus Bill and Bailouts given to companies during out current financial crisis.

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

Cost VS Benefits of Quitting Your Job

Here is an intersting article about the costs and benefits of quitting your job during bad economic times.

http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/03/10/new-record-fewer-americans-quitting-jobs/

Here is a list of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune Magazine.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2009/

Trade Restrictions

Earlier last week we talked about trade restrictions and why they are used and their negative concequences. Here is an article that discusses this in relation to the recently passed Government Stimulus Plan. In this article, the topic is foreign labor VS American labor.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123672811446488841.html

The Costs and Benefits of Joining the Army During Bad Economic Times, MPG or GPM?, and The Stimulus Plan

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/the-armys-not-coming-up-short/

Here is an article about how army enlistments go up during bad economic times.

http://www.mpgillusion.com/

Here is an interesting website about the true fuel efficiency of cars from The Marginal Revolution website.

http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/02/what-can-we-learn-from-japan.html

This is an article that compares the stimulus package about to be passed in the US with something similar in Japan.

Sweat Shops in Cambodia

We discussed last week that sweat shops may not be the worst place to be compared to how people survived before the sweat shops arrived. Here is an interesting article that discusses this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html?_r=2&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

News From Zimbabwe

On Thursday, during second block we discussed Zimbabwe and how its problems have lead to immigration issues with South Africa. Here is a recent article about a concept called hyper inflation where prices are actually increasing by the minute. How bad is it in Zimbabwe right now? They just introduced a 1 TRILLION dollar bill there. Here is the article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7832601.stm

Hong Kong Named World's Freest Economy

Speaking of Hong Kong...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_bi_ge/as_world_economic_freedom_1

The True Value of a Friend on Facebook

Here is an article about a new Facebook App that allows you to de-friend 10 people to get a free Whopper from Burger King. This is probably the best and (at the same time) most useless example of comparing Marginal Cost VS Marginal Benefit. So...how much are your friends truely worth?!

Note: In the article you can see how the App works by using the link.

http://www.kottke.org/09/01/facebooks-valuation-in-whoppers

People respond to INCENTIVES:

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/01/principle-4-people-respond-to.html

Something for you Sports and Economics fan:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/questions-for-sports-economist-andrew-zimbalist/