Course Code: ECON 204
Academic Year: 2024-2025
Though we don't always notice it, our lives are profoundly shaped by our relationships to money and markets. Whether through an economic recession, a wave of inflation, the advent of cryptocurrency, or simply the reality of finding a job that pays the bills, the dynamics of our economic system impact us every single day. And yet, many of us feel like economics is too complicated to understand and we are left to trust that the people in charge know what they are doing, even in times of crisis. This course will provide an overview of our money and market systems to provide a framework for understanding the dynamics that shape our lives. It begins by explaining the role and logic of different forms of money and the decision-making process that central banks undertake in determining interest rates and managing inflation, before expanding to look at financial markets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds and currency speculation. We then examine more closely our own relationship to these markets through our roles as consumers, workers, and citizens of governments that are heavily implicated in the market system, even while responsible for public services like highways, bridges, parks, schools and pensions. Finally, we will assess the overall state of free market economics and the global system of capital and finance that determines the conditions in which we live and work.