Quote of the lecture: "National debt sits there like an economic fact" - Chris Horrie

Banks, banks, and more banks. I officially know everything there is to know about them, or that’s how I felt after Tuesdays lecture anyway. Investment banking, central banks, retail banks, you name it, we covered it. A term I did find quite interesting sounding was ‘quantitative easing’, and as I’m not too sure about what it is I decided to find out. Apparently it refers to the creation by a central bank (covered those) of a predetermined quantity of new money as the start of a process to increase the country’s money supply. Ok, so basically it’s where we print new money so as to ensure that we have more than enough? My research goes on to reveal how interest rates are decreased in order to INcrease the money supply, and this will only happen if we are lacking in money and therefore unable to stimulate the economy.

Another thing that Chris covered in the lecture was talking about Keynesian economics, and how they believe that debt is not a problem. Founder of this concept John Maynard Keynes believes that the solution to the depression was to stimulate the economy by a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. This would result in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment, involving more income and spending etc etc etc.


Another interesting point that Chris did mention was how he believes that the city is run by greed and fear. He was talking about the stock market, and how people invest their money into various shares out of greed of gaining profit, however when their shares are doing badly they quickly move them around out of fear. I think when there is money involved greed and fear are generally the only two words that surround it, a greed to gain more, and a fear to lose it all.