TheGreatCoursesPlus - Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know

TheGreatCoursesPlus - Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know

An economist and award-winning professor leads you in a panoramic exploration of our monetary and financial systems, their inner workings, and their crucial role and presence in your world.

https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/money-and-banking-what-everyone-should-know

1: The Importance of Money

What is money? Consider the fundamental nature of money as a social contract and a social institution that coordinates economic activity. Explore the connections between financial institutions and economic well-being, including the importance of "stable value money" to trade and the critical roles of healthy banks, efficient asset markets, and monetary policy....

2: Money as a Social Contract

Money developed as a medium of exchange to facilitate trade. Here, learn about five stages in the evolution of money. Beginning with barter, trace the rise of commodities as money, the invention of coins, paper money backed by precious metals, and finally our era's "fiat" money, which has value by agreement alone....

3: How Is Money Created?

Study the invention of paper money in the history of goldsmiths issuing paper receipts backed by gold deposits. Then trace the important history of the gold standard, upon which nations pegged the value of currencies, and the reasons the gold standard was abandoned in 1971....

4: Monetary History of the United States

The U.S. government's role in financial affairs has been historically controversial. Learn about the two failed attempts in early U.S. history to establish a central bank, followed by the system of "national" banks chartered in the 1860s. Follow key issues surrounding national currency and coinage, leading to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913....

5: Local Currencies and Nonstandard Banks

Finance is not just the business of the wealthy. Here, study nontraditional models for solving economic problems, from examples of local currencies galvanizing local economies to "microfinance" arrangements such as Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, which create highly successful savings and loan programs for the poor....

6: How Inflation Erodes the Value of Money

This lecture investigates the factors governing inflation, beginning with an inflation history of the United States over the last century. Learn about the correlation between inflation and the consumer price index, and how inflation is triggered by excess money growth. Also, review inflation's detrimental effects and costs....

7: Hyperinflation Is the Repudiation of Money

The history of hyperinflation offers both a compelling story and a cautionary tale of inflation's damaging effects. Trace the root causes of extreme inflation in governments that finance deficits by printing new money. Then, study key cases of hyperinflation, its "vicious circle" quality, and the inevitable fiscal reform that ends it....

8: Saving-The Source of Funds for Investment

Explore the meaning of "investment" in economics as increases to a nation's "capital stock"-the equipment, technology, and human resources used in the production process. Then see how investment is made possible by domestic saving and foreign borrowing, and how investment is critically related to economic growth....

9: The Real Rate of Interest

Understanding how interest rates work sheds important light on our economy. Study the difference between the "nominal" or agreed-upon interest rate in a loan transaction and the "real" rate of interest. Learn how the "real" rate factors in the rate of inflation to determine the actual cost/benefit of borrowing and lending....

10: Financial Intermediaries

Financial intermediaries or "middlemen" play an important role in modern economies. Investigate how intermediaries such as commercial banks facilitate borrowing and lending, which provide valuable services to each party. Afterward, study the fundamental types of intermediary institutions, including savings banks, mutual funds, money market funds, and insurance companies....

11: Commercial Banks

In learning how commercial banks operate, examine the sources from which banks acquire their funds and how they use the funds they acquire, as well as how assets and liabilities function within banks. Finally, study three formal definitions of money, and how banks literally create money in the process of making loans....

12: Central Banks

Investigate the role and importance of central banks as they provide banking services to commercial banks, focusing on the U.S. Federal Reserve. See how central banks control an economy's interest rates and create money, and how their ability to increase or decrease the money supply makes them the world's most powerful financial institutions....

13: Present Value

Present value is an important formula for computing the current value of payments that will be received or made in the future. Learn how present value is used, in the examples of determining the current value of a savings bond and how much to save per year for future college tuition....

14: Probability, Expected Value, and Uncertainty

This lecture explores how financial decisions are made in the face of future uncertainty. Using the examples of both a dice game and a real-world business strategy, study the statistical tool of "expected value" as a method of predicting possible outcomes. See how the probability of expected profits influences business decisions....

15: Risk and Risk Aversion

Economists have developed ways of assessing people's willingness to take on risk in financial decision making. With reference to the "St. Petersburg Paradox," a classic problem relating to odds in gambling, observe how individuals tend to value the dollars they might lose more highly than the dollars they might win....

16: An Introduction to Bond Markets

Bond markets play a key economic role by channeling funds from savers to government and private entities that need funding beyond their current revenues. In this lecture, study the various types of bond instruments, including Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. Learn also about important factors underlying the federal deficit and the national debt....

17: Bond Prices and Yields

In a deeper look at bonds, investigate how secondary markets for bonds operate and what they offer investors. Study fundamental concepts including the "yield to maturity" of bonds and the "holding period yield" in understanding the link between bond prices and interest rates and how economic events change them....

18: How Economic Forces Affect Interest Rates

Changes in interest rates have widespread economic effects. Consider interest rates as market prices, set by the current market for credit. Then see how interest rates are determined in the long run by patterns of saving and investment, and in the short run by factors such as government deficits and recessions....

19: Why Interest Rates Move Together

The many interest rates in different areas of the economy tend to change together over time. Here, learn about the key factors that govern this, beginning with the ways that interest rates adjust to expected changes in inflation. Observe also how risk in borrowing and lending affects the rate of interest....

20: The Term Structure of Interest Rates

The formula known as the "Expectations Hypothesis" allows analysts to forecast future interest rates and conditions in the credit market. Understand the intuition behind the hypothesis, study the formula itself as it tracks yields on Treasury securities, and see how it benefits borrowers considering mortgages and loans....

21: Introduction to the Stock Market

Stock markets provide individuals the chance to share in the ownership and profits of corporations. Investigate the history of stock markets, their basic functions on behalf of investors, and how trades are made. Finally, learn about the various stock indexes that track the markets, and how mutual funds operate....

22: Stock Price Fundamentals

What determines prices in the stock market? Approach this question first through the "market fundamentals" model of stock prices, a formula linking a firm's capital, profits, and dividends to its share price. Contrast this with the "capital asset pricing model," which evaluates the rate of return an investor requires....

23: Stock Market Bubbles and Irrational Exuberance

This lecture introduces the fascinating group psychology of stock investing. Study the phenomenon of stock market "bubbles," in which prices are driven up without reference to profitability data. Then, grasp the "bubble" mind-set, which triggers speculative buying and selling based only on what others are paying....

24: Derivative Securities

Derivative securities play an important role in finance by allowing business decision makers and private investors to lower risk. See how derivative securities are created using underlying products, and study the major types of derivatives and how they function, including stock options, commodities futures, mutual funds, and "collateralized" debt obligations....

25: Asymmetric Information

Asymmetric information occurs when one party in a financial transaction has more relevant information than another. Learn how this affects financial markets; in particular, the challenges it presents for borrowers and lenders. Also, discover why so few firms issue stocks and bonds, and why banks are so restrictive in regard to loan practices....

26: Regulation of Financial Firms

Consider the case for government bailouts of financial firms, and why such actions are in the public interest. Then examine the types of government regulation of financial institutions, and see how the 20th-century history of bank regulation was a "tug of war" between looser and stricter rules....

27: Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Reregulation

The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 offers a clear example of breakdown followed by regulatory reform. Trace the dramatic events that led to the crisis, and learn about the mortgage-backed derivative securities that contributed to it. Finally, examine the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, designed to address the crisis's causes....

28: Interest Rate Policy at the Fed and ECB

Interest rate policy is fundamental to the role and function of central banks. Investigate how the Federal Reserve raises and lowers short-term interest rates in pursuing its objectives of stabilizing prices and promoting a healthy economy. Compare the Fed's policies with the European Central Bank's, noting key similarities and differences....

29: The Objectives of Monetary Policy

This lecture asks the question: What should the objectives of a government's monetary policy be? Explore the ways in which monetary policy on the part of central banks affects economies. Study the monetary policy mandates of several different nations, and consider whether the Fed's own dual mandate may be too broad....

30: Should Central Banks Follow a Policy Rule?

The question of policy rules versus policy "discretion" highlights how central banks operate. Examine the case favoring predictable policy by the Fed in addressing economic events, compared with treating each event as unique. Evaluate the claim that the Fed followed a specific policy rule during the term of Alan Greenspan....

31: Extraordinary Tools for Extraordinary Times

Responding to the Great Recession of 2008, the Federal Reserve took unprecedented actions to address the crisis. Here, observe how the Fed intervened in credit markets, provided remedies for banks, and stimulated the economy, and consider the question of whether its actions went too far, paving the way for future inflation....

32: Central Bank Independence

Traditional thinking says that central banks must be independent of political pressures in order to best perform their function. Learn how economists define and measure "independence" and "transparency" of the central banks of the world. Investigate whether greater independence of central banks is associated with desirable economic outcomes....

33: The Foreign Exchange Value of the Dollar

Turning to international finance, grasp how currency exchange rates operate based on demand and supply, and how this system accounts for the devaluing of the U.S. dollar over the last two decades. Also study China's exchange system, which pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar, and its implications for the global economy....

34: Exchange Rates and International Banking

Understanding the movement of exchange rates gives key insight into international banking relationships. Investigate the factors that determine exchange rates in both the short and long run, and learn how economists evaluate currencies as over- or undervalued. Observe how international banks play an ever-increasing role in finance, and why this is so....

35: Monetary Policy Coordination

The coordination of monetary policy between nations has important effects on the world economy. Using specific examples, evaluate the benefits of coordinated interest rate policy versus the outcomes of given nations acting alone. Learn about the International Monetary Fund, its functions, and the role it plays in maintaining worldwide financial stability....

36: Challenges for the Future

In concluding, consider three key questions facing the world's financial systems: Will the United States solve its chronic deficit problem? Will the euro survive? And will financial regulators find a solution for the "too big to fail" problem? Examine the complex challenges posed by these issues and their critical implications for our economic future....