Fun week... learn about economics, Part V! by gimleteye

It's the end of our week of learning, and you've been a very good class! But mostly quiet. It's OK. I understand. On a fundamental level, people really don't want to know the full scale of the economic disaster unfolding in the United States. There are very powerful forces at work to keep happy faces on grim statistics. For instance, the US equity markets seem unfazed by the credit crisis. Any bit of news that is not as bad as it might have been is seen as a cause for optimism. And yet, in thi