Scholars in Crashonomics

kabayiri

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32480360

Interesting. Global crash is now included in a new economics A-level.

It's a pity they didn't use the opportunity to coin a new phrase (they can have "crashonomics" free )

Does this try to formalise and define the problem too tightly?

I have this feeling we are still living in the wake of the crash, and it's hard to define the last chapters of something which is still happening around us.

I wonder if a certain Mr Balls or Mr Osborne are tempted to enrol?

princeofpounds

Yes, we are still writing the last chapters of the crash, absolutely.


But the problem is that whilst we do now have a pretty settled idea of how the crash arose and played out, we have not much clue about where the 'solutions' are taking us.


So we have no hope of teaching anyone about the lessons learnt and I suppose they will have to cut the story off halfway.


Perhaps though the open question is intentional, leading curious minds to think about it. Not every topic in education has to be a closed book.

Generali

It's been a while since I said this but it remains true: any idiot can slash rates and 'print' money. Getting back to a normal way of doing things is the tough bit.

We're already starting to see some of the problems these policies are creating. Swiss pensions funds for example are forced to pay an 'interest rate' of something like 6.25% to pensioners. Try doing that when the local banks are charging you to keep cash with them and a third of the main bond benchmark has a negative yield.

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

It's been a while since I said this but it remains true: any idiot can slash rates and 'print' money. Getting back to a normal way of doing things is the tough bit.
...

I don't think that is how politicians like Alastair Darling and Gordon Brown like to portray the events.

The would rather replace "any idiot" with "we took decisive action to stop a disaster". Like any big budget American action movie the "solution" unfolds in the last 10 minutes.

Perhaps the course does trace patterns and causalities. I think it's a useful inclusion to the syllabus.

purch

Any idiot/saviour of the Universe (delete as approprate) can nationalise the Banks and pass all the risk onto taxpayers too.