No 18: Two videos you really MUST watch

OUR economics coursebooks and syllabi are still  yet to catch up with events started by the credit curnch over the past year. This means we have to educate ourselves about them, since, in my opinion at least, any student of macroeconomics is badly informed who doesn't know about, for example, quantatitive easing.

There are two extremely useful videos to help us with this. I show both of them to all my classes. If you haven't seen them, watch them now, and I make no apologies for showing them again in class in future. If you've seen them, watch them again.

KNOWLEDGE OF THE TOPICS CONTAINED IN THESE VIDEOS MAY SEPARATE THE TOP STUDENTS FROM THE OTHERS WHEN IT COMES TO OUR FINAL EXAMS.

The first is called the "Crisis of Credit" and explains the events that led to the credit crunch:

http://www.crisisofcredit.com/

The second is a part of the excellent Marketplace website's whiteboard series, and explains what governments are trying to achieve with quantitative easing:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/22/whiteboard_quantitative_easing/

Spot of Economics Health Warning: Watching These Videos May Seriously Improve Your Economics Knowledge!