Issue 42, Spring 2012

William A. McEachern, Editor

ODDS AND ENDS

• The Wall Street Journal offers a useful interactive map of bank failures across the country at http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/Failed-US-Banks.html. Failures increased from only three in 2007 to 157 in 2010, before backing off to 92 in 2011. Incidentally, the FDIC division that shuts down failed banks had only 219 employees in 2007 but 2,133 by the end of 2010, including more than 50 veterans of the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s called out of retirement. Still, the 157 failures in 2010 were only about a quarter of the 608 banks that went under in 1989, the worst year of the savings and loan mess. You might discuss with students why, despite many more bank failures in the late 1980s, that banking crisis did not do wider damage to the economy. The unemployment rate in 1989 averaged only 5.3 per cent, and there was no recession until July of 1990, triggered more by the first war in the Persian Gulf. That recession lasted only eight months, versus 18 months for the recent one.

• To come up with its quarterly GDP estimate, the Bureau of Economic Analysis draws on thousands of data streams. On estimation day, the office is locked down, with windows covered, phones silenced, and the Internet switched off. Only certain people are allowed in the room. Nobody speaks aloud the final estimate for fear that electronic eavesdroppers might be able to pick up and exploit the information in financial markets. This CSI-like background heightens student interest in what otherwise might be just another estimate.

• According to analysis reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a full professor in economics earned 14% more in 1980 than a full professor of computer and information sciences or a full professor of English. Among the 17 disciplines examined, only those in health sciences and law earned more than economists. By 2010, the economist's advantage slipped to 10% above computer and information sciences but rose to 41% above English professors. Only business administration and law professors outpaced economists.

• "The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works." —Daniel Kahneman

• "Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn." —Herbert Simon

• "Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." —Will Durant

• "I'm not young enough to know everything."—Oscar Wilde

• "I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught." —Winston Churchill

• "Learning is a treasure that follows its owner everywhere." —Chinese proverb

• "A good listener makes a good teacher." —Polish proverb

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