It wont exactly fit in your pocket, but you get the idea.
My objective was to create a single, descriptive powerpoint slide to introduce my students to ABCT. I am teaching a graduate level Investments course in Boston, MA this semester and most, if not all, of my class has never been exposed to ABCT or Austrian ideas. I feel that its critical for them to understand what drives business cycles, how to invest through them, the role of government intervention, etc. I am posting it to this forum with the hope of getting your feedback- criticisms or complements.
I saw no mention of the central bank and its role in creating ABCT. I saw a reference to the government encouraging easy money policy. No need to avoid the subject; let your students know the cause of the cycle, it was the central bank that enables the credit expansion to continue.
Lower left hand corner, you reference the “Revolutionary works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard”. I’m not so sure the word “revolutionary” is needed (let the works stand on their own merit!). You might just want to simply link to Mises.,org, and perhaps link some specific books or articles, ie What Has Government Done to Our Money, etc.
Regarding the formatting, I found the words in light blue to be hard to see, I missed some of these entirely the first time l looked at it.
Finally, when presenting something like this to a group of people in a classroom, I hope you are well steeped in the subject matter, which may seem intuitive but is actually quite complex. You should be familiar with common critiques of ABCT, ie, rational expectations, etc. I know you are not teaching economics, but be prepared to address questions or criticism.
Overall, it is a courageous effort to place this information into the mainstream. Just be prepared for the “reaction” when it comes.
Michael, sure it will fit in your pocket - just fold it up
Good job - BTW, i used to live (and study) in Boston. Out of curiosity, where are you teaching? We could use some mroe austrian at Boston University (and Harvard and MIT while we’re at it…)
My only criticism is similar to Chloe’s. I think it needs to be made clearer that banks per se are not the problem, but central banking is. Or more specifically, the monopoly on money creation. The slide as a whole could be interpreted as meaning the problem is the greedy banks, because you say "Banks engage in synchronized credit expansion " without making it clear that they can only do this because they are cartelized by the central bank structure, and “Crises arises due to a change in the conduct of banks who typically halt lending”, which makes it sound like if banks just kept on lending, there we be no bust but a permanent boom. Despite what you say at the bottom in light blue, and your last point in the green box, I think someone who is new to the theory might go away being unclear about whether the Austrians are saying the cycle is inherent to the market, or a result of government manipulation.
I also noticed you do not make the point that capital goods industries are affected more than consumer goods industries, or explain why this is what we would expect given the theory. Though perhaps this is the kind of detail that you had to leave out for space reasons.
Out of curiosity, how are actually going to present this? The writing is too small for you to display this slide on a screen (unless it is a very big screen). Are you going to make seperate slides where you ‘zoom in’ to each area?
Trulib- Thank you. Terrific points and I intend to incorporate them. I actually have an oversized screen that I am going to pull it up on. The text is larger than you’d think on the projector.
Given the limited amount of real estate Im working with, I will have to address a few key points verbally.
I started work on a second slide on the Fundamentals of the Monetary system. It is VERY much in DRAFT form but again, I would welcome this audiances comments on where to take it:
Regarding the final version. I liked the lists under “Fluctuations” and “Cluster of Errors”.
Regarding the main chart, I’m still having a problem with it. Any presentation of ABCT must include / incorporate the concept of the time structure of production. It is the time structure of production that is being distorted.
I don’t see the time structure being presented / explained.
I assume a separate chart would be created to explain the time structure of production. Without it, I’m having trouble buying in to the 1 - 7 cycle shown. especially how it leads back to 1.
