See the Job Losses

This interactive graph allows you to see the changes in national job creation/loss since 2008. Definitely gives an entirely new meaning to the whole "red" state "blue" state thing.

This should keep me up for a few hours tonight.

Fortune 500

It's good to be king.

The Fortune 500 is now out and available for all to see. Once again, energy (oil, gas, electric) and transportation (GM & Ford) is well represented in the top 10.

I wish I could be around 100 years from now to see what this list looks like once most of the global oil supply has been depleted.

...and will there be ANY car companies on that list?

Are You Smarter Than an AP Macro Student?

Find out right here, right now.

My Sentiments Exactly!

I have been thinking along these lines since like, oh I don't know, maybe October 2008.

Maybe they will all get the next one right. But then again, maybe they won't. It depends right?

I mean, how hard can it be to predict the near meltdown of the world economy?

Weekend Reading

Love him or hate him, Nobel Prize economist/Princeton professor/NY Time op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has become one of the more outspoken critics of government economic policy. Enjoy.

How Much for Polar Research?

Boy do I feel like a fool. All along I thought the Tea parties were in honor of him. Sheesh, I need to start watching more tv I guess.

Any of you go to a Tea party yesterday? Your students? The closest I got was the small traffic jam I sat in right in front of the state capitol building. Many of the signs I saw related to taxes and spending others were a bit on the scary side. Doesn't need changed? Huh?

Now would probably be a good time to dig into government taxing and spending a little bit to see where the money is really going. Anyone care to guess how much we spend on Fusion Energy? Or how about NASA? The answers to these questions, and many many more, can be found on this terrific poster. Now, where to find an extra $407 billion to plug that looming budget deficit gap?

You can purchase the poster right here.

Score Another One for Education

If you do nothing else in class today please make all of your students read this article?

"...education remains the best antidote against unemployment."

Indeed.

From the Classroom volume 17

Flabbergasted is the only way to describe how I felt after a conversation I recently had with a teacher new to the profession. He told me that he felt bad about using other teachers’ activities and lessons, and therefore, refrained from it.

Are you kidding me??

With all the demands upon our time, the sports to coach, parents to contact, retirement portfolios to obsess about, newspapers to read (just in case a student wants to actually talk about current events in her social studies class), and occasionally spend time with our own families, the last thing I want to do is re-invent the wheel.

So I thought there might be some teachers out there, particularly ones new to teaching Econ, who do not yet have an EOCT study guide for their students to complete. It might not be the flashiest wheel ever created, but it correlates to the GPS and you are certainly welcome to it.