EconEdLink

Balancing the Federal Budget

ESSENTIAL DILEMMA When, if ever, should the nation prioritize balancing the federal budget?

It's a Not So Wonderful Life

In this lesson students learn about banks and banking. The study the fractional reserve system, and the role the Fed plays in the money creation process.

The Early 1980s: A Tough Time For Home Builders and Mortgage Bankers

Have you ever thought of how much it might cost you to finance the purchase of a home? The home's purchase price is likely to be many times the yearly income of the typical household. If families waited until they had accumulated enough savings to use cash to pay for a home, they would be denied the benefits of homeownership for many years. Instead, most families go to a mortgage banker or some other lending institution to obtain the necessary credit to purchase their home. A mortgage loan is a credit instrument used by homebuyers to finance the purchase of a home. Interest payments made on the mortgage loan represent the cost of acquiring this credit. For most homebuyers, the largest cost of buying a home is the monthly interest paid on the mortgage loan.

Teaching Financial Crises

Teaching Financial Crises is an eight lesson resource that provides an organizing framework in which to contextualize all of the media attention that has been paid to the recent financial crisis, as well as put it in a historical context. The current events stories, opinion pieces, and other popular media pieces that are today in great supply have generally not connected to educational objectives, historical analysis, and economic processes and concepts that are used in the high school classroom. In Teaching Financial Crises, teachers will find a non-partisan and non-ideological resource to help them simplify and offer balanced perspectives on this challenging subject matter.

2 out of 9 lessons from this publication relate to this EconEdLink lesson.