Crash course

Haven't written much lately but I have a valid excuse: Macroeconomics.  Macroeconomics is the study of the national economy as a whole or its major components. It deals with the "big picture" of the nation's economic activity and explains the mechanics of BBP, economic growth, inflation, (un)employment and other economic indicators.  That's the easy part - the difficult part is understanding the underlying principles as well. This means that you have to understand how the government's monetary and fiscal policies contribute or slow down economic growth.  What happens to Demand when the interest rate increases or decreases?  Why do Central Banks have to monitor money reserves? What happens to the money supplies when the Demand for Goods and Services increase and why people tend to save and put money on their bank accounts when you're heading for a recession?

The challenging part of this course is that we only have two days to assimilate a course which is normally taught over the course of a year.  Wannabe economists spend an entire year on these topics - we get the crash course. And man, did we crash... Talking about crashes:
As with every module, we also had to write a paper and show that we can apply the theories and insights acquired during the course.  Mine was on the economic growth of Ireland between 2005  and 2012. I had to look in the eye of the Celtic Tiger and explain how a booming economy headed straight for recession and deflation.  How come that one of the poorest countries in the European Union turned itself into the fourth richest country in the EU over a period of ten years and all of sudden went bust? They didn't really go bust like Greece but still.... they are looking at a serious deficit now and yours sincerely had to come up with a couple of recommendations on how to run a balanced budget and stimulate growth again.

We'll see if I have convinced our teacher or rather confused him but I must admit I enjoyed this module. When I now hear on the radio that the Belgian citizens have put billions on their bank account in 2009, I know that this is because they are preparing for tough times. If the newspaper writes that running a balanced budget is key in 2010, this means that debt stabilization is on top of the government's agenda.  And if you have to choose between running balanced budgets or fiscal policies, you must not ignore the system of automatic stabilizers.

Like the Russian playwright Checkhov put it so well: "knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice". Let this be our ground rule for 2010 and may it be a year full of knowledge, wisdom, prosperity and happiness.