Where have I Been?

Well, it been well over a month and there has been no journalistic output or otherwise from me.

My excuse? I'm a student.

When I stated that excuse, what was your initial thought?

He's lazy? He's just been drinking? or some other stereotypical cliché concerning student life?

If you did contemplate any of the above, you would have been wrong. When I said that my lack of electronic pondering was due to being a student, I was implying that I was far too busy with work.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines work as follows:

"work (n): Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something."

Mental effort- yes.

Activity which mental activity is directed towards- degree.

For those who don't know (note: the following may sound patronising but my intention is by no means so) a degree involves assessment by means of exam or written assignments, which involves the individual to do work, the amount conditional on the aspirations in mind. For me, my aspiration to do well is deep-rooted and endemic in my daily cycle of thought and seamlessly co-ordinated with my conscience in times of apathy.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that students in this country seem to be categorised far too readily by a stigma well-founded in today's society. For some, this is not an issue, not because they conform to the image necessarily but maybe because they are not necessarily troubled or offended by this process. For me- this is an oversight impossible to ignore.

At this point, I want to make it clear that in discussing this, I'm not looking for waves of overoptimistic and disingenuous praise for what I do. I don't. What I do want is for students to be classified and judged as individuals and not labelled by the zeitgeist that surrounds university life at this present time. In no other society would a decent person dare classify one person by a number of unrealistic, unfair and inaccurate thoughts without meeting and forming their own opinions about them, so why does it seem social acceptable to do it with students?

While the issue isn't racism per se, the idea of forming opinions or notions about an individual with only common stereotypes and outdated illustrations is analogous to the sense of discrimination that surrounds racism or any other form. Of course to try and draw distinct parallels between sexism and what I am describing would be to belittle the struggle of those who fought for those rights which identified them as individuals and not figures of lesser stature in the public domain.

Whilst here I try to outline my distain with the current view of students, I don't expect a revolution mirroring that of the feminist movement or Dr. Martin Luther King, I ask only for the public to think a little harder about the person they address when they are informed that that very individual is a student.

Sorry it's been a while but I am here now...

Hello again!

Sorry it has been a while since my first post, the new term hit me harder than first thought with dissertation research and the usual grind but I'm here now!

Today, I thought I'd share with you what I am planning to write my final year dissertation on because I've done a lot of research for it and so, it would be rude not to share it now, wouldn't it?

"No, not an economic blog post?!?!", I hear you say!

Do not fear, as I said in my first post, I will not confuse you or act condescendingly when talking about economics but just sharing with you a few of my general ideas and thoughts of my work so far.

Okay? Good! Now come out from under your coat and keep reading, I promise you will find this, at least a little interesting because it is happening right now, if not where you live but somewhere very near.

Right, first question;

Who is this man? 

Did you say Sir Mervyn King?

CORRECT!!! Give yourself a pat on the back.

Second question;

What does he do?

A bit stumped on this one? No worries, let me help you out a little bit.

Sir Mervyn King is the governor of the Bank of England, and when I say the Bank of England I don't mean Natwest, RBS or any other high street, retail bank, I mean the Bank of England.

The Bank of England is what is known as a central bank. Many countries have a central bank, or sometimes a continent i.e. Europe may have a central bank. 

Here is a picture of the Bank of England:

Third question;

What does the Bank of England (or a central bank) do?

This is where we have to start getting a bit technical but I promise it won't be too technical!

In England, since the beginning of the 1997 Labour government, the Chancellor at the time, Gordon Brown, put in force an act which gave the Bank of England independence from the state. Independence in this sense is the ability to control certain policy without instruction from the government. 

More specifically, the policy in which they are able to control without government interference is monetary policy. Monetary policy is a broad spectrum of different control and instruments which can be used to influence specific aspects of the economy, so for example inflation, growth (by means of GDP) and unemployment.

You might have event heard of some of these tools that the Bank uses, such as interest rate setting and Quantitative Easing (QE). So, you may be thinking, is that bloke you told us about earlier the one who decides all this? 

No, in fact it is a group of people that do. The group is known as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) who meet on a monthly basis and decide the rate of interest to be set amongst other policy-related decision such as the amount and the decision to enforce QE.

QE seems like a rather complex process from the name they have given it, however the concept is really easy! Trust me. It is as simple as putting more money into the economy. Really, I'm not joking. Okay, it isn't as easy as Classical economist Milton Friedman once put it:

"[price deflation is analogous to] dropping money out of a helicopter."

So, back to my dissertation topic.

So, considering all that we have talked about, what I am concerned with is the effect of central bank independence on the indicators of the economy, like we discussed; inflation, unemployment, output etc.

You may be thinking now, okay....SO WHAT??

Well, I'll tell you what.

It is quite often assumed that by handing control of the instruments that can influence the economy to economist, that we are doing the right thing for the economy, however such was the view of the man above, maybe the economy is something that is not to be fine-tuned with such instruments but a natural mechanism which survives by itself.

As to whether he is right or not, I don't know...kind of the point of the dissertation. However, from a few of my readings that I have done so far, it seems there may be a glimmer of truth in what he said, as studies show that increased independence actually has a negative impact on inflation, which is the main target of the economy for the Bank of England. 

Seems a bit self-defeating right? Well, that's why I have chosen to take this topic on, I feel it is a relatively neglected topic in economics and perhaps a lot can be learned by analysing results from policy choices from independent banks on the health of the economy.

Okay, that's enough from me right now but I hope this has been somewhat useful into your understanding of what is going on right now in the UK and why it may not be as effective as you might have thought.

If not, well...what can I say?

Here is a song that I like right now, here it is to listen to as my apology for boring you:

(Keep an eye out for the pigeons, they crack me up!) 

Hello there, nice to meet you!

Hello!

Welcome to my blog and my very first post! I am a complete stranger to the world of blogging, so bear with me, give it a few posts and I'll be getting to grips with the etiquette and practises of this side of the internet.

At this point, I think it appropriate to introduce myself, don't you?

My name is David, I'm 21 and hopefully by now you'll have noticed that I am an economics student in Leeds. What you won't know is that after a soul-destroying Summer internship at a (I'll have to be careful here) "Big Four" professional services firm, I have decided to take the plunge and commit to spending at least the next 5 years in education, as I attempt to work for a Ph.D and become an academic.

Now I realise you may be thinking that I am simply lacking sanity in choosing to put myself through such an ordeal when life could be a whole lot easier but for me, studying economics is not a task that I feel obliged to do in order to secure some menial, generic graduate job but more a hobby which I can do and will (eventually being the key word here) get paid for.

In the words of Sir Winston Churchill:

 "Choose a job you love, and you will never work another day in your life."

While words like this may seem to be common place and branded about by people as common clichés, they do hold significant meaning because to do something in life merely as a means to an end to survive, in my opinion, is a life not worth living.

Anyway, I shall digress from this life philosophy seminar (one quick note, I studied philosophy alongside economics when I first started university, so I apologise profusely for any philosophical rants in the present or future. I can assure you that they will not last very long) and talk a bit about why I have set this blog up.

My main motive for this is to voice suppressed opinions that I have deep down because let's face it, Twitter can only handle 140 character posts and I don't like Facebook, so I guess this is the natural solution. In my future posts, I be talking a bit about life as an economics student, my (painful) quest in trying to gain funding for my postgraduate study, a few odd bits and bobs thrown in about life in general and occasionally a little bit of economics but nothing too deep or pressing (and at the same time, not trying to come across as patronising or condescending).

I think I'll wrap up this first post now but on the right of this post is my Twitter feed, so if you want to ask or tell me anything please go right ahead, I'd love to hear from you! Also, I think just below that is a poll for a question that I've uploaded, feel free to vote on that. I'll try to change the question quite regularly but sorry in advance if I'm a bit slow with that.

So, it was very nice to meet you and all being well, I'll post again in the next few days with something a bit more interesting.