For Wednesday, Sept 30

Read this post and think about the question.  Also turn in your writing about chapter 5.

Read for Monday, Sept 28

Read Keynes' beauty contest theory of markets and read Krugman chapter 5.  Your written observations are due Wednesday.

Homework for Friday

Read this short post. Why did US GDP dip so much below trend?  Why did US GDP rise so much above trend?
Also compare Thailand with Iceland's story.

I have a simple homework assignment for you to do for Friday.  It will be trivially easy for some of you, but it is worth doing so that you have a greater appreciation of the stories we are reading about.  Get the map of the world from the handouts section on Jenzabar (this link will only work if you are already signed into Jenzabar), print it out, and find and label:

Mexico, Argentina, Japan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, Britain, England, Ireland, France, Soviet Union, Russia, Latin America, Brazil, S.E. Asia, and Chile.  You’ll have to draw in some lines on your own for some of them and if it is easier to define a location verbally rather than with the map, that is just fine.  Don’t quibble about the perfect definition of regions like Latin America and S.E. Asia; I’m just looking for a general sense of where these places are.

This assignment helps illustrate things like the oddity of international investors mixing up Mexico and Argentina, but not Mexico and Spain. 

For Monday, Sept 21

Read this article about Minsky (not just the blog post, but go to the original Boston Globe article).  Also read this paragraph which critiques of the article.
Finally, when you have done the other reading, to review of what we discussed today, click on this link to listen to or read an NPR article about regulatory arbitrage and read about too big to fail and regulation. I had intended to assign the NPR article earlier this week, but I guess I forgot to mention it. 

Readings To Date

So far we have read Krugman's chapters 1-4, plus two readings about Ponzi schemes.