Unit 5

Jim’s Guide Unit 5:  Future Economic Governance: Money, Banking, and Trade

This page describes the activities and graded work you need to complete for Unit 5.

What you need to do:

  1. Readings:
    1. Read this Jim’s Guide Unit 5: Economic Governance – Money, Banking, and Trade – all pages:
    2. “Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine?”, an article in Atlantic Monthly available here. The article is required, but there is an optional video there as well (long – 90 mins).
    3. Marshall Auerback: Greece and the Rape by the Rentiers“, a post at Naked Capitalism.
  2. Video: View the two short videos listed on the videos page.
  3. Post a comment to the Discussion posts labeled “Unit 5:…” under the Discussion tab. Points are awarded – this is a required assignment.
  4. Take the Unit 5 quiz in Desire2Learn.  Remember, you get two attempts.  The last page of this Unit 5 Jim’s Guide lists some study tips and topics for the quiz. This is a graded, required assignment.
    Quiz 5 is worth 10 points. Questions are drawn from all of the reading and viewing assignments for this unit except those labeled as “optional”. Some questions ask you to repeat some essential ideas and some questions require application of the concepts and ideas you learned. Topics and a study guide for the quiz is provided on the last page of this Unit’s Jim’s Guide. You are allowed 2 attempts at quiz 5. Your highest score of the two attempts will count toward your grade. As soon as you open and view the quiz it counts as an “attempt”. Attempts are not timed and you may save your work and continue it later.
  5. Finish and Post Your Book Review #1.  More information on this assignment, which is worth 10% of your overall grade, is located on several pages under the Resources tab. Specifically, you should look at:

Key Concepts and Terms in Unit 5:

  1. What is the desirable role of banks and financial markets in an economy?
  2. Joseph Stiglitz identifies several reasons why “free markets” (complete deregulation) does not work well in financial markets. What are they?
  3. What is the “doom cycle” that Simon Johnson describes?
  4. What conditions must exist for a government to be able to default? Why is a sovereign currency nation unable to default?
  5. What are “austerity” programs with respect to Europe?

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