Finally found that article that explains the debt economy....Now I am sad and scared.

Really I need to not read Metafilter as soon as I wake up, it takes an hour off my day easily. An hour I could spend at the gym instead of getting panicked by financial forecasting. Oh well, later when I have no money and have to eat those plastic wrapped old vegetables with brown spots that they sell for 50 cents I am sure I will look svelte and have nicely hollowed cheek-bones. Why am I worrying now, we're headed for a massive recession!

More than a decade of economic and financial-market chaos followed, as the dollar remained the international currency but traded without an absolute measure of value. Inflation rose not just in the United States but around the world, grinding down the worth of many securities and brokerage firms. The Federal Reserve pushed interest rates into double digits, setting off two global recessions, and new international standards and methods for measuring inflation and floating exchange rates were established to replace the gold standard. After 1975, the United States would never again post an annual merchandise trade surplus. Such high-value, finished-goods-producing industries as steel and automobiles were no longer dominant. The new economy belonged to finance, insurance, and real estate—FIRE.

It's a long complicated article but well worth the read.

Why don't I just give you all my secrets before the magic show?

Of Development and Debt

This is by one, Daniel Davis, who blogs also at Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived.

He makes a few dismissive comments about Dave's recommended book there, in his post on Crooked Timber, but on the whole I'd say it's a pretty good, if a little 'overly economicist-y' summary of the current problem. It's actually not any new information, I guess, if you read it you'll find yourself saying " uh-huh yeah but, so?" a couple of times. But it does lay it all out for you.

Oh yes, and because snarky bloggers aside, sometimes it's just good to know howstuffworks. Here is comprehensive 7-parter that I will end up reading in it's entirety for class, but not before...

I go buy a box of cookies at the Dep and to watch some television (with my dog).

Lates,

NPR Radio Special on Consumer Debt

I am hard at work on a Friday night doing my research for the "Global Debt Crisis in 5 minutes or less" presentation and I came across this radio show which I will probably listen to some of.

It's about the US debt culture, which - not surprisingly - laid the groundwork for some global shifts in economic practice around developing a countries capacity to thrive on negative balances.

Uh.. that's all I can say now that makes me sound like a pencil head, I have more readings to get through before I can really you know, tie it all up in 5 minutes or less...

Here's the link to the show : A Nation in Debt