Tuesday 26 July 2011

Smash up Your Televisions...But Watch your Favourite Documentaries First



I know that Dr Joseph Shaw, LMS Chairman, has written a highly commendable and laudable post on our need as Catholics to smash up our televeisions, but every now and then an interesting documentary does emerge from 'Satan's lantern'.

This is a quite fascinating exploration of the economic crash of 2008, about who won and who lost, entitled 'The Super Rich: The Greed Game'. Quite inexplicably, even though the presenter does a good job of explaining hedge funds and the sub-prime mortgage crisis, I still don't understand it, so don't bother explaining it to me either, because I'll never get it. Economics just goes right over my head.

2 comments:

Joseph Shaw said...

For an explanation of the financial crisis, have a look at this YouTube video:

http://youtu.be/bx_LWm6_6tA

Most amusing and informative!

Physiocrat said...

You know more about economics than most of the experts. There are three factors of production. Land, capital and labour. Wealth is produced when capital is placed on land, and labour is applied. There, that was not difficult?

So you get yourself a guitar. That is capital. You find a suitable plot of land eg a square yard of pavement where people pass by. And you start playing. That is labour. If you are any good you will get money for your efforts. Some of that money is payment towards the cost of your guitar. Some of it is a value that depends on where you have chosen your pitch. And the rest of it is the reward for all your effort - your wages.

Though you will not learn this in any academic institution, you already know that - which is the whole of economics in a nutshell. If "economics" is going over your head, it is bullshit anyway.

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