Reading List for New Year's Eve 2021
While we shy away from “listicles,” it is difficult to get to the end of the year without posting some retrospective reviews of the past year’s events. Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year!
The Year in Review
We will start with MarketPlace’s year in review. Lots of good graphics in this one.
And Ben Carlson (A Wealth of Common Sense) provided his favorite and most telling charts from 2021.
Inflation dominated headlines in 2021, particularly in the...
Reading List for December 3-5
Economics
November jobs number was a huge disappointment, but unemployment is down, underemployment is down, and hours, wages and labor force participation are higher. (Yahoo Finance)
Unemployment claims continue to be low compared to pandemic levels, indicating a tightening labor market. (Reuters) (MarketWatch for more analysis)
Jerome Powell drops “transitory” from inflation vocabulary during his hearing in front of Congress, (Yahoo Finance), and according to a Gallup poll, 7 out...
Reading List for November 19-21
Investing
If you are looking for a longer read, this Mother Jones article looks at the crypto craze and the question of whether or not it is rational to jump into this market.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco takes a look at a proposal to issue a 50-year Treasury Bond. (FRBSF.org)
Economics
Read the latest on numbers of quits and job openings and wage growth. (Reuters)
Existing home sales reached an eight-month high in September. (Reuters)
Job growth over the summer was...
Audio Resource: Current Events Through Podcasts in 2-4 Minute Segments
We are experimenting with methods to bring podcasts to the classroom. Teachers who participated in PDs on this topic encouraged us to move forward with this concept. The idea is highlighting 4 Marketplace podcast segments of 3-4 minutes on current event topics that will interest your students. This could work well as a jigsaw with a group of 4 students with each student taking one of these short segments and sharing what they learned with the group. Enjoy!
Coca-Cola nearly doubled its...
Question of the Day: Which Halloween item do consumers expect to spend the most on in 2021?
Answer: Costumes at $33.59 spent per person; Decorations were a close second at $32.10 per person
Questions:
What are your plans for Halloween this year? How would you/your families spending differ from last year's Halloween?
What role did social media have on your Halloween spending this year (e.g., did you find costume ideas on Instagram?) Explain.
Would it surprise you to learn that Halloween is the second most popular holiday in terms of consumer spending? Why do you think it's so...
Econ Extra: The Great Resignation
EconExtra is a series of posts that go beyond the textbook, relating current events and recent developments in economics to content standards, and providing resource suggestions to help you incorporate the current events into your lessons. The content in this post could be incorporated into lessons covering several of the EEC Voluntary Content Standards, including 1: Scarcity, 11: Money and Inflation, 13: Income, 15: Economic Growth, 18: Economic Fluctuations, 19: Unemployment and...
Reading List for October 22-24
Financial Literacy
CEE and JumpStart issue new standards to better reflect the digital world. (BusinessWire)
Advocacy
Read about what is going on in New Mexico regarding mandating personal finance. (Santa Fe New Mexican)
Economics
There has been a lot of coverage of the (negative) impacts on the economy of the fiscal response to the pandemic. A Wealth of Common Sense takes a “glass half-full” approach to the data instead. (lots of great graphs in this one)
One of things...
Podcasts in the Classroom - Current Events Edition: Facebook’s Woes
This series is designed to bring together a variety of shorter, readily available podcasts to introduce a topic from recent headlines and inspire discussion.
Events surrounding Facebook and its other platforms (Instagram and WhatsApp) made lots of headlines over the past week to ten days. First, a Whistleblower appeared on “60 Minutes” and then went in front of Congress. And then there was that six-hour outage on all of its platforms.
Here are some...
Question of the Day: Which group is seeing the fastest growth in being scammed online: Gen Z OR those over 60 years of age?
Answer: Gen Z
Questions:
Why do you think that young people are seeing faster growth in online scams?
Have you seen any examples of online scams? How could you tell they were scams?
What advice would you give to your peers to avoid being scammed online?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (CNBC):
Here are some common scams that target teens or young adults and how to avoid them, per Social...
Reading List for October 15-17
Economics
There has been a lot of economics news this week about inflation, the unusual labor market, and the Nobel Prize.
NPRs Planet Money explains who the Nobel Prize winners in Economics are, and what their contribution means to the field. Go empiricists!
We have talked about “shrinkflation”—same price but smaller package. Now we also have “shadow-inflation”—same price but less service. (NYTimes or Seattle Times)
Consumer prices as measured by the...
Reading List for October 8-10
By Beth Tallman
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Oct 08, 2021
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Financial Literacy, Current Events, Economics, Investing, Student Loans, Career
Financial Literacy News
A bill making financial literacy education mandatory in Ohio now sits on the Governor’s desk awaiting his signature into law. Brian Page discusses this legislation on the Cleveland.com opinion page.
Wharton Finance Professor calls for mandatory finance education in this Knowledge @ Wharton opinion piece.
Read about the “Bridges to Wealth” program, founded by a Penn professor, and brining financial literacy into West Philadelphia that “levels the...
EconExtra: All About the Debt Ceiling
EconExtra covers a news headline about Economics that might be worth a bit of a detour in an economics class to bring the real world into the classroom. The looming debt ceiling and fears of the US defaulting on its debt has been headline material for a few weeks, and will continue to hang out there until there is (hopefully) some resolution before we actually hit it. This topic would fall under CEE standard 20: Fiscal and Monetary Policy.
Headlines
What the federal debt ceiling showdown...
Reading List for September 17-19
Investing
This long but worthwhile article from the Atlantic expertly explains just how severe the shutdown and subsequent market responses were in March of 2020.
“The function of shares as risk‑bearing capital is to act as a shock absorber in hard times. Far more worrying than equity markets was what was happening in the market for bonds, and above all, U.S. Treasuries—the safe assets that promise a counterbalance to volatile equities.”
The article gives perspective...
Reading List for September 10-12
By Beth Tallman
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Sep 10, 2021
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Current Events, Economics, Behavioral Finance, Investing, Cryptocurrencies
As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it might be interesting to remember that the stock market closed for four days following the attacks. To learn more about how the stock market/economy reacted to that event, and what lasting impact the event has had over these 20 years, check out this Investopedia article.
It might be interesting to have students research and reflect on the impact of the Covid pandemic, both in early days and since then, and see if there are any...
Reading List for Labor Day Weekend (2021)
By Beth Tallman
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Sep 03, 2021
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Current Events, Economics, Investing, Cryptocurrencies, Career, Retirement
A slightly longer list for your holiday weekend reading.
Economics
Today’s jobs report was disappointing. Only 235,000 jobs added in August (700k+ expected). (Yahoo Finance)
Previous months revised upward
Unemployment rate drops from 5.4% to 5.2%
Wages up, particularly for leisure and hospitality
Delta variant seems to be the cause of decline in leisure and hospitality jobs
Listen to the Indicator podcast from Planet Money as Mike Konczal, Director of Macroeconomic Analysis at...
