Help me I have economics project to do..

Well at college I (and my group) were given a project to do dealing with the "The US Economy in Crisis?"

I was pretty much the only one to want to do it, knowing I know nothing about economics and I think it's boring but being as I'm an 'alternative thinker" and I did want to learn about the US economy to know "wtf is going on!", I chose it. Now my team is stuck with the topic because it was the only valid topic left to choose from... I know I should've just chosen a microEconomics class instead of the current class I'm in.

The problem I guess is I'm not really conventionally minded and there's SO much info on the net and everywhere else I need something small so I can fit it in less than a semester. I feel like most sources would not be telling you the whole truth and there would be conflicting information. I need to first learn about economics to begin with and I'll be doing that as much as possible but suggestions are appreciated. Then if anyone could recommend me some good and legit resources (and for a beginner too) for information on the current events in the US economy. I just don't know where to start ah... I feel like I'm behind most of these people.. I didn't go through all of high school, nor did I even retain much from my general ed courses in college and I'm so pressed on time with work and my own practices and stuff.

[edit on 2-9-2010 by The Quiet Storm]

[edit on 2-9-2010 by The Quiet Storm]

reply to post by The Quiet Storm


You might include a reference to a site called Shadow Stats. It's a paid for site, but some of it is publicly available. It is highly respected as being relatively accurate.

Also excerpts are available of the International Forecaster.

Asia Times Online has many articles that provide a outlook on the western economies.

Infowars.com has a slew of articles posted online by respected contributors.

I realize that this topic is a lot larger and more complex than I thought.

reply to post by The Quiet Storm


If you want to simply focus on why our currency may be in trouble, just do a history of fiat money. Also:
Quantitative Easing
Monetization of Debt

Parallels between US and other countries where currency has collapsed.
As for the whole economy, we have low manufacturing and lots of people are employed by the government now. Also, we don't have any huge growth areas right now, so unemployment is likely to remain. The only thing that brought us out of the great depression was WWII.

Here's how I understand economics in my own retarded way.

Inflation is too much money in relation to chasing too few goods. Conventional economics only call "inflation" expansion of the money supply, which is only partially correct. Deflation is less money in relation to a fixed set of goods. The buyer is king, but the catch is there is less money floating around - and therefore less potential buyers.

Imagine there is a balloon on the ground with a chalk circle around the balloon. And now another set. The chalk outline is representative of the general population in both cases. The first balloon is monetary supply. The balloon can shrink or expand over our chalk circle outline. It can cover alot of the population or it might not. If there are a lot of jobs, one can say that the money supply is distributely (unequally of course) adequately across the population, giving many people access to money. If there is a lot of inequality, think of Bill Gates' bank account, then you can imagine pinching off the balloon like a clown making a balloon animal. This creates "potential inflation" (potential increase in the money supply if a super rich person wanted to spend it). And it all matters where the air supply hose is pumping the air - into the banks or into the general economy.

The other balloon with its chalk outline is resource extraction in relation to the population. If you have expanding resource extraction while the money supply is not expanding, you can have a situation like the Great Depression where people didn't have jobs but they didn't starve either because the person who did have money access could afford to give cheap food away.
If you have expanding money supply and shrinking resource extraction, then you will have hyperinflation. If you have shrinking money supply and shrinking resource extraction, then you have a delegitamized system and people will quickly replace it with barter or something else. The problem for the US in particular is that a job is people's only access to money (no govt handouts).