Will Merritt

June  26, 2013

Macroeconomics

Critique of Natural Resources by Mercer Knott

I really liked Mercer's blog post because it was as thoughtful as it was well-written.  He clearly understands multiple of the handful of benefits that can come from using native-natural gas rather than importing from foreign countries. Increased investment is essentially what we need.  He did a great job at explaining why we need more loans to the businesses for increased investment.  But above all I like how he pointed out the fact that almost all of our rates would be positively influenced by a change in our country's obtainment of natural gas.  It is an American idea at its core. 

This blog provided the article summary and a great response to it, but didn't stop there;  his reference to what we learned about interest rates in class was very cool.  The provided explanation of the "belt to suspenders approach" is also key to this blog's appeal.  

Mercer also did an excellent job when he provided the statistical evidence from the article in a clear, easy to understand way.  The problem with interest rates, as Mercer points out, can be hard to understand sometimes, but  Mercer evidently understands the effects of unemployment.  

Mercer starts by talking about the general spectrum that unemployment and inflation should be standing on.  He also talks about how we could be doing a lot better. He provides the stats from other countries as well as our own, which is not only relevant to the fluctuation in interest rates world wide, but also the effect natural gas would have on the world market also.

The part when mercer writes about the cfo is a little confusing.  I agree with Mercer that we should push for the most economic growth possible, as well as push for more ideas for ways of achieving a higher growth rate, but I don’t think the cfo is the one to blame of not doing a better job.

Although I agree with the objective of Mercer's blog, I think he could have discussed the reasons why the US does not harvest natural gas on a larger production scale. Mercer definitely tells us why we should proceed with his plan, and does a good job at it, but I want to know why we don't make this power move.  The article Mercer chose probably didn't provide the other side of this argument either though so I still think this was a great blog.