THE POWER OF MACROECONOMICS:

Economic Principles in the Real World

The course that I have chosen is The Power of Macroeconomics: Economic
Principles in the Real World. This course is lectured by Dr. Peter Navarro, PhD of
Economics and Public Policy from The University of California, Irvine and holds
a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. He received several teaching
awards in 2010 for the MBA programs that he teaches. He is also an author which
has written quite a number of books, some of which are If Its Raining in Brazil,
Buy Starbucks, What the Best MBAs Know, When the Market Moves, Will You Be
Ready? and etc. Navarro's work has appeared in Barrons, Business Week, The
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Harvard
Business Review, among other publications. Navarro has appeared frequently
on Bloomberg TV and radio, CNN, NPR, Marketplace, and all three major network
news shows. He is a regular contributor to CNBC and has appeared on 60 Minutes.
Additionally, he often produces investment videos for thestreet.com.

Macroeconomics examines the economy as a whole and answers questions such
as 'What causes the economy to grow over time?', 'What causes short-run
fluctuations in the economy?' 'What influences the values various economic
indicators and how do those indicators affect economic performance?
Macroeconomics can be best understood in contrast to microeconomics which
considers the decisions made at an individual or firm level. Macroeconomics
considers the larger picture, or how all of these decisions sum together. An
understanding of microeconomics is crucial to understand macroeconomics. To
understand why a change in interest rates leads to changes in real GDP, we need to
understand how lower interest rates influence decisions, such as the decision of how
much to save, at the firm or household level. Once we understand how an individual,
on average, will change their behavior we will then understand the large scale
relationships in an economy.

Government management of the economy is always a key political issue - not
least at election time, when the government must defend its economic record over
the previous four or five years. Each government must set targets and objectives
when it assumes power - and often, economic objectives lie right at the heart of a
government's overall strategy.

This is a complete college and MBA-level course in the principles of
macroeconomics as normally taught in a quarter or semester time frame. The
centerpiece of the course is a set of eleven lectures, broken down into 5 to 7 topics
per multimedia presentations that are specifically designed to simulate the
traditional classroom lecture experience. Each lecture covers topics such as inflation,
unemployment, fiscal policy, monetary policy, and, in this age of globalization,
exchange rates and the economics of free trade. These multimedia presentations
feature a digitally-mastered audio sound track; and each slide in a typical
presentation may include bulleted material from the audio track, dynamically
constructed graphs such as the Keynesian model, animated charts and figures,
historical photos of people such as Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and Ben
Bernanke, or some combination thereof.

To me, this everything in this Coursera course is highly interactive so that
throughout each lecture, I was asked numerous questions and feel free at any time
to put the presentation on pause as I think of possible answers. Each week I was also
prompted to reflect on a question related to the topic and encouraged to discuss the
questions with my fellow classmates. After each lecture, I took an online quiz and
checked both my grade and my answers. At the end of the course, I took a final exam
online.

At the time of writing this report, the course is only in its fourth week. The total
duration of this course actually stretches to ten weeks. I will carry on this course to
the end so that I can have a deeper understanding as to how macroeconomics works.

In crux, this has been a good experience because I had a sneak peek on what will
be taught in the undergraduate level. In addition to economics I am studying in the
Cambridge A-Level now, to a certain extent it has helped me to decide that this will
be the major that I am going to be pursuing in the future. Thank you.






Character Formation 2014
(THE POWER OF MACROECONOMICS:
Economic Principles in the Real World)

Name : Kong Shao Cherng
Cohort : 1401D
Lecturer : Mr. Yoshua