No longer over a barrel?
David Smith turns his attention to oil prices in today’s Sunday Times and asks why the spiraling cost of crude has not hit global economic growth and inflation as much as in past oil shocks. Most of the recessions and major slowdowns in the global economy have been pre-dated by spikes in international commodity prices. Has oil now lost the power to shock?
read more...»A to Z of AS Macroeconomics!
Teaching at 5.30pm on a Friday afternoon as the fag end of term approaches isn’t great fun but after a successful SWOT analysis of the UK economy yesterday, I set my AS macro group a half hour challenge today - to produce an A to Z of macroeconomics as a prelude to their revision. Working in pairs, they tried to assemble twenty-six entries - it could be a concept, an issue in the news or perhaps a well known economist - anything so long as it had a macroeconomic connection! Similar to the game of Scattegories, teams only scored a mark when their answer was unique within the class.
Double points could be scored for suggestions such as Ben Bernanke, price pressures or credit crunch. Three marks for purchasing power parity! This led to some very creative and quirky answers.
Anyway ... here is a potted (albeit incomplete) summary of the responses. My job over the weekend is to produce a word document that provides a web link to a newpaper or BBC news story for each of them - so that they can access some articles linked to their suggestions whenever they want to. Can blog users suggest other entries? I am happy to email the word file over if you want to try this exercise before the end of term!
read more...»Keep an eye on oil futures
Spot what is happening to the futures price in the market for black gold. OPEC, the 13-nation Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has decided to maintain crude oil production at current levels despite pressure from the United States over the soaring cost of vehicle fuels and heating oil. The producer cartel met in Vienna to discuss the state of the market and opted to hold output steady. Indeed they have hinted that the next move in OPEC oil supply (which accounts for around 40 per cent of the world’s total) will be lower anticipating the effects of an economic slowdown in the United States.
(BBC) Oil rises past $105-a-barrel mark
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