I would recommend the field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. While being a great learning experience, it was also very interesting to see all of the trading floors and the history behind currency. Looking at the chaos of the trading floor drives you to want to understand what is going on, and is a great motivator for learning more about economics. I learned a lot about how Chicago affects the world because of our trading, and learned more about the importance behind the city. It was an excellent trip.

     How do banks make money by holding onto other peoples' money? Banks make money because of a system revolving around their Reserve Requirement. The Reserve Requirement is a law that states: A bank without a minimum of X amount of money cannot open for business. Now "X" is a percentage set by an organization called The Board Of Governors. So if I deposit 100 dollars into a bank that has a reserve requirement of 10 percent, the bank cannot open the next day unless they have at least 10 dollars (assuming I am the only one who made a deposit in said bank). The 90 dollars that are left is what is called the Excess Reserves. This Excess Reserve total is then multiplied by one over the reserve requirement, and the final total is the greatest amount of money the bank can make off of keeping my money for me.

     Check Clearing! The United States bank system consists of 12 different federal reserve banks. These banks create all the money that then gets distributed to their individual region. When you want to send money from one of the 12 regions to the next, your money (in the form of a check) needs to go through a process called check clearing. This simply means that the money from one Federal Reserve bank needs to be exchanged with the money in another Federal Reserve bank. After this is finished, the check is cleared.

     Where is all of our tax money going to? One large program that our taxes fund is Obamacare. But what's in it for us tax payers? Obamacare is a program that is made to provide everyone with health insurance, but it is not voluntary. You must pay for it, regardless of if you think you will need it or not. The results are debates over whether it is constitutional or not, businesses having a hard time, lots of money spent on a program that the majority of people don't need. To provide medical care for every citizen of an entire nation requires lots of resources, doctors, and buildings/infrastructure. Hoe long can an program like this last? Will the toll of this program accumulate to put our nation deeper into debt? Only time can tell.

     Where does all our tax money go? How does the government manage our budget? To break it down simply, they use it for mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending is spending on programs required by law, such as the Military. Discretionary spending is spending on purchases not required by law, like sending additional money to schools so they can better teach a subject such as computer science.

     Have you ever bought something that had a negative effect that you didn't expect? You could call that a negative externality, I like to focus on how the beginning of the word sounds like extra. If you buy a TV and you watch it all the time, a negative externality could be the damage to your eyes or that you become obese because of it. Everything has a externality, just think about whether the positive externality is worth tolerating the negative, you give some and you loss some.

Why does the business cycle work? It changes all the time, and like any cycle, it always ends where it started. But how? The four parts of the business cycle in order are expansion, peak, recession, and trough. It works because the amount of money the country produces is limited, and affected by so many different things that you could study it your whole life without ever having a full understanding. When we are in a period of expansion, as much as we can want it to continue, it can almost be compared to the weather because every sunny day can only last so long before the occasional cloud rolls through. But like the weather, we can predict almost precisely what the next day will look like. However, some days will always surprise us with something we never would have expected.

     Gross Domestic Product, better known as GDP. GDP is a way of measuring the well-being of our economy. It can be calculated by taking the sum of Investment, Consumption, Government Purchases, and Net Exports. What the GDP does not account for is the underground market for products like drugs, weapons, stolen cars, etc. GDP is not perfect because of this, and also its inability to measure overall happiness in people's lives. Although it has these flaws, GDP is still the best way to measure our economy.

          Is GDP a good measure of a country's economic well being? I think so. To start, GDP is measured by the sum of a country's personal consumption expenditures, gross private domestic investment, government purchases, and net exports. This covers the majority, if not all, of the factors of our economy. That being said, is GDP a good measure of our economic well being? Of course! GDP basically IS our economy, so of course it would have a big part in our country's economic well being.

Greed. Is it really so bad? While being one of the seven deadly sins, greed is a motive that implies self gain and cheating others out of any positive gain. In reality, greed can actually help everyone if looked at from a different perspective. For example, think about Bill Gates. While being the richest man in the world, he has opened job opportunities that would have never been there without him creating Microsoft. He may have much more money than he needs, but he also has given people the opportunity to make a living. Just because he makes so much money does not mean he took it from anyone, if anything he has created one of the most successful, constantly expanding companies that will live on after he is gone to provide people with more jobs and profit for themselves.

     Shutting down the government. How unbelievably childish. How can we depend on a government that would so readily create such a chaotic situation over a minuscule conflict like the slight changes in Obamacare. The democrats like it how it is, but the conservative republics feel it would be better to amend Obamacare to a slightly more conservation minded program. Apparently all negotiation failed, and we now find ourselves without all government facilities running such as libraries, museums, and historical monuments. We can only hope that the senate and the house come to a consensus on this as soon as posible, and end this frustrating conflict.

     Demand, how much people desire said product. The law of demand states that price and quantity demanded are inversely related. In other words, as one goes up, the other goes down. Which makes sense to me in that if chocolate is expensive, you will buy less of it. Or if chocolate is only a dime per bar, you might as well buy ten for a dollar, and in doing so increase the quantity demanded. As for the reality of things, a dime per chocolate bar will only exist in my wishful thinking.

     Marginalism, how much our items really worth? If you we're stranded in the desert and were given the choice, would you choose a diamond over water? The water has more marginal benefit to you because you need it at that point in time. However, the diamond has more marginal value because you could sell it for lots of money. Reluctantly, the smart move would be to take the water, unless of course you are survivor man, in which case the diamond may seem more worthwhile.

Chemical Weapons in Syria

   Obama gave a great speech about the chemical warfare in Syria. I for one, am always biased towards whatever resolves the problem without a fight, for I believe that all fighting is barbaric and unwise for the sophisticated people of today. However, when it comes to terrorism my opinion on fighting is difficult to maintain. When it comes to terrorism, I side with Obama that we should not appease this behavior. When bad things happen and no one says anything, it is as if we are agreeing that it was right to do. We know this is wrong, so we must act. Only then will we be able to rest easy, knowing that even in the chaos of war, there is still some form of law we can all count on.

~Cody Nicholson

     Human tendencies. That is after all, what economics is wrapped around. Thought is often associated with a train, everyone who thinks has their own train of thought. As much as I like trains, thinking is in no circumstance anything like a train. Thought travels down a river. It has its calm, peaceful states, as well as the crashing rapids that are more specifically defined as our bad moods, attitudes, and our length of temper. I only make that anology to better portray the unpredictability of economics.
     Economics is defined as the branch of knowledge concerned with production, consumption and transfer of wealth. One aspect of the system cannot work without the other. However, in the end what matters most is the satisfaction of the consumer. That being said, the consumers opinion of said product become the immediate concern. After which, it becomes more vital that the psychology of economics is considered as much, if not more than anything else.
     -Cody Nicholson