Sunday, January 31, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Econ 229: History of Business and Finance from 1850; Sunday 9:20-12:05
will be posting course material here. As you probably noticed there is a direct link to this post on the right hand side of the blog.
The material posted here is for:
Econ 229: History of Business and Finance from 1850
Sunday 9:20-12:05 Section: 9U3
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12:05-1:00 and 3:40-4:30
Tuesday and Thursday: 7:30 to 8:00 and 9:15-10:00
Syllabus
Reading
For March 21th
Economic History of India 1857-1947
Tirthankar Roy
Chapter 3; Page 73-113
Chapter 9; Page 291-313
Chapter 10; 314-329
Chapter 11; 341-375
Download the pdf here*
*Just a heads up, this document is in color. Set your printer accordingly.
This is a black and white copy The quality is not as good
The book is also available in the library. I am going to put it on reserve tomorrow
night.
For March 28th
Gary Gorton on the Financial Crisis
Calomiris on the Financial Crisis
The above link is a direct link to the October 29, 2009 EconTalk podcast. You can play the podcast directly from the site or download it. If you prefer, you can also subscribe to the podcast through the ITunes Store
Chapters to Read in Naill Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money":
The introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 (pages 1-119)
Here are some links that have information on the gold standard.
The material posted here is for:
Econ 229: History of Business and Finance from 1850
Sunday 9:20-12:05 Section: 9U3
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12:05-1:00 and 3:40-4:30
Tuesday and Thursday: 7:30 to 8:00 and 9:15-10:00
Syllabus
Reading
For March 21th
Economic History of India 1857-1947
Tirthankar Roy
Chapter 3; Page 73-113
Chapter 9; Page 291-313
Chapter 10; 314-329
Chapter 11; 341-375
Download the pdf here*
*Just a heads up, this document is in color. Set your printer accordingly.
This is a black and white copy The quality is not as good
The book is also available in the library. I am going to put it on reserve tomorrow
night.
For March 28th
Gary Gorton on the Financial Crisis
Calomiris on the Financial Crisis
The above link is a direct link to the October 29, 2009 EconTalk podcast. You can play the podcast directly from the site or download it. If you prefer, you can also subscribe to the podcast through the ITunes Store
Chapters to Read in Naill Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money":
The introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 (pages 1-119)
Here are some links that have information on the gold standard.
For April 11
Ferguson: Chapters 5, 6 and the afterward
Also listen to:
This American Life Episode 355, The Giant Pool of Money
You can apparently stream it for free from the above link. You can download it for your MP3 player from the above link or from ITunes (it costs a dollar).
For April 18
Rogoff and Reinhart: Part I-III (Chapters 1-9, pages 1-138)
For May 16th
Rothermund, Dietmar: The Global Impact of The Great Depression:
Chapters 1-6, 9, 14-16
Adam Curtis Documentaries:
The Century of the Self Episode #1:
On Google Video
Right click here to download the file*
Pandora's Box Episode #3:
Google Video
Right Click to download file*
*If you decide to download the file, you may also need to download codecs to play it (google search for k-lite) or download VLC media player for either mac and pc to play them.
Assignments:
Writing Assignment #1: Due April 4th
Writing Assignment #2: Due May 2nd
Writing Assignment 3: Due May 29th
Macro 101 Sunday 1:00-3:40; Spring 2010
I will be posting course material here. As you probably noticed there is a direct link to this post on the right hand side of the blog.
The material posted here is for:
Econ101: Macroeconomics
Sunday 1:00-3:40 Section: 1U3
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12:05-1:00 and 3:40-4:30
Tuesday and Thursday: 7:30 to 8:00 and 9:15-10:00
Syllabus
Homework Assignments
Homework Assignment #1: Due March 7th
Homework Assignment #2: Due March 21th
Homework Assignment #3: Due April 11th; Data is here
Homework Assignment #4:Due May 2nd
Homework Assignment #5:Due May 16th
The material posted here is for:
Econ101: Macroeconomics
Sunday 1:00-3:40 Section: 1U3
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12:05-1:00 and 3:40-4:30
Tuesday and Thursday: 7:30 to 8:00 and 9:15-10:00
Syllabus
Homework Assignments
Homework Assignment #1: Due March 7th
Homework Assignment #2: Due March 21th
Homework Assignment #3: Due April 11th; Data is here
Homework Assignment #4:Due May 2nd
Homework Assignment #5:Due May 16th
Macro 101 T/Th 8:00-9:15; Spring 2010
I will be posting course material here. As you probably noticed there is a direct link to this post on the right hand side of the blog.
The material posted here is for:
Econ101: Macroeconomics
T/TH 8:00-9:15 Section: EATBA
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12:05-1:00 and 3:40-4:30
Tuesday and Thursday: 7:30 to 8:00 and 9:15-10:00
Syllabus
Assignments:
Homework Assignment #1: Download it Here
Homework Assignment #2: Due March 18th
Homework Assignment #3: Due April 29th
Homework Assignment #4: Due May 13th
Take-home Midterm: Due April 6th
Data is here
The material posted here is for:
Econ101: Macroeconomics
T/TH 8:00-9:15 Section: EATBA
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12:05-1:00 and 3:40-4:30
Tuesday and Thursday: 7:30 to 8:00 and 9:15-10:00
Syllabus
Assignments:
Homework Assignment #1: Download it Here
Homework Assignment #2: Due March 18th
Homework Assignment #3: Due April 29th
Homework Assignment #4: Due May 13th
Take-home Midterm: Due April 6th
Data is here
Friday, January 8, 2010
Matt Taibbi: The Great American Bubble Machine
Like I said in class, don't read this so much as just about Goldman sachs but about how the financial industry in general has been behaving.
The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again
MATT TAIBBI
Posted Jul 13, 2009 1:49 PM
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibilliondollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in goldenparachute payments as his bank was selfdestructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailedout insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman — not to mention …
But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pumpanddump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumercredit rates, halfeaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
If you want to understand how we got into this financial crisis, you have to first understand where all the money went — and in order to understand that, you need to understand what Goldman has already gotten away with. It is a history exactly five bubbles long — including last year's strange and seemingly inexplicable spike in the price of oil. There were a lot of losers in each of those bubbles, and in the bailout that followed. But Goldman wasn't one of them.
The Whole article is here.
The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again
MATT TAIBBI
Posted Jul 13, 2009 1:49 PM
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibilliondollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in goldenparachute payments as his bank was selfdestructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailedout insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman — not to mention …
But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pumpanddump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumercredit rates, halfeaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
If you want to understand how we got into this financial crisis, you have to first understand where all the money went — and in order to understand that, you need to understand what Goldman has already gotten away with. It is a history exactly five bubbles long — including last year's strange and seemingly inexplicable spike in the price of oil. There were a lot of losers in each of those bubbles, and in the bailout that followed. But Goldman wasn't one of them.
The Whole article is here.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Econ 10.1: Macroeconomics, Winter Intersession 2010 Course Material.
I will be posting course material here. As you probably noticed there is a direct link to this post on the right hand side of the blog.
The material posted here is for:
Economics 10.1 Section JAN1
Macroeconomics
M-F 9:00-1:00
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Syllabus
Midterm #1: Due Monday Jan 11th.
Feel free to email with questions. However, I will not reply to questions that can be answered by reading the midterm carefully.
******I have fixed a typo in questions 3. Originally it read that the quantity of rice supplied at $2.50 was 200,000. This obviously doesn't make any sense. I have fix it. The correct quantity supplied at $2.50 is 800,000.
Midterm #2:Due Tuesday Jan 19th
The material posted here is for:
Economics 10.1 Section JAN1
Macroeconomics
M-F 9:00-1:00
I can be reached at:
andrew.a.bossie@gmail.com
Syllabus
Midterm #1: Due Monday Jan 11th.
Feel free to email with questions. However, I will not reply to questions that can be answered by reading the midterm carefully.
******I have fixed a typo in questions 3. Originally it read that the quantity of rice supplied at $2.50 was 200,000. This obviously doesn't make any sense. I have fix it. The correct quantity supplied at $2.50 is 800,000.
Midterm #2:Due Tuesday Jan 19th
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