Faculty First Year Seminars 197ECON3 - The Great Recession, 2007- ?

The US economy entered its most serious post-war recession in 2007. Five years later, unemployment remains high with nearly 7 million fewer jobs than when the recession began. Its magnitude and duration make this great recession a problem for economic policy and theory. In contrast with the failed policies of the Federal Reserve and Hoover Administration in the early 1930s, the Bernanke Federal Reserve and the Obama Administration have conducted aggressive monetary and fiscal policy which stanched the bleeding and stopped the collapse before reaching the dimensions of the Great Depression of the 1930s, without promoting a sustained recovery. We will discuss the appropriate economic policy for the United States and its major trading partners and consider the implications of the Great Recession for our understanding of macroeconomic theory

Freshmen Only