The US Capitol building in Washington, D.C. - where Congress voted to provide bailout money to banks during the financial crisis we are learning about in class! I took this picture during Spring Break of 2010.
Dear class,
I really enjoyed the discussion and questions today! My biggest fear with teaching is that the content is too boring. Hopefully, we managed to make it so that learning about all of these terms and new information was interesting. Read on to see what we did!
AGENDA 3/20/13:
Warm Up
Bad Bank
Capitalism: A Love Story
Homework: Check the blog!
Warm Up: (#12 in your notebook) Why do budget airlines charge for onboard meals (which are typically free on luxury airlines), while luxury hotels charge for Internet access (which is typically free at budget hotels)?
Again, a really good discussion of possible reasons for this in class. Lots of great economic thinking! This is a situation that I frequently encounter when traveling, so it is interesting to learn about the reasons behind the different marketing choices.
Bad Bank: The last NPR podcast about the financial crisis! In class, we went through the main terms - I had students write down the definitions from the top of this paper:
During the middle of this, a great conversation came up about where the United States gets oil. Here is a great article, with a graph that is somewhat more recent than the chart I showed the class: NPR.org: Where Does America Get Oil? You May Be Surprised.
After the definitions, we started listening to the (really excellent, in my opinion) podcast about the financial crisis and bailout. Here it is if you wanted to listen again or preview next class:
During the podcast, I paused and showed the class how to make a bank balance sheet with the information that was being given. The podcast uses the funny example of a dollhouse mortgage at a bank to show how the real life financial crisis happened. I stopped the episode about 15 minutes in, to move on and stop everyone from being bored. We will come back to this next class.
Capitalism: A Love Story - Next, we started watching this film by Michael Moore. I made sure to note that the film has an obvious bias to it, and that we will discuss what this is as we watch. To not mention this would be basically showing propaganda as fact, haha. It really is a great film to watch and discuss, especially at the end of the Free Enterprise chapter. Here is the worksheet that I passed out:
We stopped about 15 minutes into this, as well. We will return to it next class!
Please make sure to come and take the Chapter 2 test if you have not taken it yet. Also, please turn in the Chapter 2 review packet. I will post updated grades on Friday. :-)
doing my homework
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