So about this project, and blog posts; I've been slacking on it for a while. I just posted blogs 7 and 8, which were due sometime the week before last week. And now, I'm doing the reflective post, which was due last week on Wednesday. Great work habits. But anyway, the project has been coming along pretty well, besides the fact of the extremely late work.

I've been thinking about the project, and how it's at such a high level of professionalism. I mean, we have to contact change agents, write down an action plan for the change agents and expect them to do something about our project. If the topic chosen needs funding, a source needs to be found. It's a lot of work, and it requires a lot of patience and discipline. It feels like I have both of those at times, but recently I've sort of lost them. Luckily, I think I've also gotten them back. I mean, I am writing these blog entries. I could either write these blogs, or not write them. But I chose to. Oh, and one last thing, resources have recently been a pain to come across--good resources at least. On that note, posts 9 and 10 (Unfortunately the final ones) will be posted later this week.

Both blogs 7 and 8 can be related since they both have to do with solving the problem of inflation in the past. Post 7 was from '52, and 8 is from '80.

Here's the document I found. It's downloadable as a PDF file.

The document has some relatively modern ideas, even though it's from 1980. That shows the similarities of inflation in both old times and new. People look at inflation in one point of view. The point of view is "This is inflation, and what it is. This is how we can solve it." That's how inflation is looked at in both today's world, and the world of the 1980's.

I was reading though the one-page file, and a couple of sentences really caught my attention. They read "Inflation never has and never will go away; We think were intelligent reason motivated decision makers still our company and country leadership still talks about inflation "Going away" Never!" Agreed, about the inflation will never and has never gone away part. Inflation can be lowered to a very small percentage, but is extremely difficult to get rid of, and according to the file, impossible to get rid of.

So, instead of trying to get rid of it, the article gives ideas on how to lower it. Here are a couple of them: "Stop catching up; no increases of any kind for 90 days; Hardship - yes - otherwise disaster for everyone; Have no cuts in the value of our money; report the decreases in the value of our money instead of "inflation" decrease in cents per dollar".  It's kind of hard to follow, since it's more of an outline than an explanation, but nevertheless gives you an idea of how economists would solve inflation back in the 1980's. The page even satted that a movement should be lead, and when directors are unclear, that is the time for a thrust. I wasn't too sure what the author meant by this, but It was a pretty interesting little find.

It's been quite some time since I've written a blog, which is completely my fault; I am a week or few weeks late on these blogs. But, here goes the seventh of ten epic blog posts about the economy, and where it's headed.

So, I was searching for a bit, trying to look for something to blog about, and I ran across, a TIME article . I was reading it, and tried to make sense of it, but it was so hard to comprehend and understand. It seemed like it was a few paragraphs quoted from a report and written into an article. I thought it was from the present day, but I checked the date on it and it's from March 10, 1952. I started to break it down to try and understand it.

This is the first paragraph of the article: " Just as many labor contracts are tied to the Bureau of Labor Statistics index of consumers' prices, so billions of dollars worth of business contracts are tied to the BLS wholesale price index. Frequently, the delivered prices of new ships, houses, engines, etc. depend upon the fluctuations of this index from the time they were ordered."  From reading that a few times over, I know that back in 1952, labor contract were tied to the BLS. All of those contracts summed billions of dollars, and it's all tied to the BLS. The price of certain products depend on the BLS index. Interesting...

The article then went on to say--if you lived back then-- that just lasy week this important index underwent a big change. The index was brought up to date by including scores of products (television sets, antibiotic drugs, plastic materials, Orion, frozen foods, etc.) which existed with rarity when the old index was drawn up in 1932. So when the index was brought up to date it was such a big deal because it hadn't been updated since 1932. Several hundred other commodities have been made since then. Updating the index would allow a more accurate cross section of present day markets. The second change, which brought up criticism, according to the article, was that the index base started at 100 instead of 0. Thus, when the old index ended it was recorded at 174.8, which would only be 74.8% above "normal". The new index stood at 111.7, only 11.7% higher. The article ended with "Cried critics: a handy device for the Administration to hide the effects of inflation in a presidential election year."

It was interesting to read something about the economy and what was happening with it back then in 1952. The way this article was written was completely different then present articles written about inflation, and the economy. Back then, it seemed like the articles were written so that people with some kind of economical background could understand it. It's the same today, but the severity of it is lessened. Otherwise, it was an enlightening piece.