Section V Extra Credit Sources (for Tufte's ECON 2020, All Sections, Spring 2022)
For 4/15, 4/18 and 4/20 If there's big news, I'll cover it. Just a super minor piece of news. I said in Chapter 11 that changing the reserve ratio is no longer used by our central bank as a monetary policy too, but it is sometimes still used by other central banks. China's central bank cut their reserve ratio on the 15th. This is an expansionary policy: being required to keep less money in the vault, means that banks can make more loans. China has been pursuing expansionary monetary policy with this policy tool since 2011, as shown in the top graph on this link . Except, for this one. CM in the 11 am class sent in an article entitled " Two Wisconsin gas stations are suing a competitor for its low fuel prices ". It is tangentially related to inflation. Basically, gas stations are trying to use the legal system to make sure customers have to buy gas at the more expensive price they'd like to charge. Yes, this is dumb. But legislators and bureaucrats fall for t