Blog #1 Planet Money Live

9-19-12
          Tonight, I went to the lecture "Planet Money" at the MU's Grand Hall. Two men by the names of Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg explained multiple economic problems with society. These two deal with these problems constantly in their lives. They created a popular documentary based upon these topics, "The Giant Pool Of Money". These two were great to watch because they not only preached education, but they did it with a sense of humor. As if this lecture didn't provide me with enough information, they also have a blog I have checked out and found multiple facts and opinions that intrigue me. They said they planned on coming in with a long speech about how the economy has gone down the drain, which it has, but then they realized our state of Iowa has actually been doing decent during these times. The unemployment rate is pretty low and our economy is actually striving. They said the main question is, "how screwed are we?" This is the problem with our economy. There are low levels of jobs, lowest they've ever been at 6 % job loss. Not only are we at our worse, we are nowhere near recovery.
          Adam told us one of the main reasons for the problems and economy not making a recovery. He put it this way; There are many homeowners who bought a beginners home years ago. Now these homeowners have families with multiple children, causing these beginner houses to be crowded, however they dont want to risk trying to buy and sell a house on the market because of the risk so they are staying safe and remaining in their small, payed off homes. Because of these people not moving into bigger, more expensive house, the smaller, cheaper houses aren't going up for sale. This doesn't give people who are poor and homeless opportunities to spend the little they have in order to try and start something new.
          The country believes there is one "superhero" by the name of Ben Bernankle. He is the Federal Reserve Chairman. The Federal Reserve is not government, it is an independent organization that controls the U.S. dollar. They are responsible for giving money a value and have the ability to create money at will.
          Alex also was talking about how the banks do not want much money and how more money is bad for a bank. The money has to be garenteed back to the owner on top of the interest. Thanks to this, they need to find people who will take out loans and pay back the money with even bigger interest.
          The main picture is the Federal Reserve Bureau wants people to take risk, like moving into bigger homes. They threw in a few technical things I didn't quite understand but that was one of the main points I ran away with. People believe the Ben Bernankle is the therapist of America. He gets inside our heads, our hearts, and tries to change our feelings for the future. Most people have healed from the money scare and are ready to upgrade. Get that bigger house, or that bigger SUV. Ben stated last week, "until such improvements are achieved". This is what Americans were striving to hear from him. He stated that he was all in for fixing the economy and financial struggle in the United States of America.