Retrospectively, I find it interesting that when I select three seemingly random topics that all interest me, all three happen to be strongly connected through the common thread of the ever present dollar. To me, that reveals a subconscious thought process that I posses, one that is forever thinking economically and financially. Each of the reviews I received about my possible topic choices were all not only conflicting, but also quite vague. They failed to offer any concrete advice as to which one would be the best candidate. So, I set out on my own, thinking about my own personal interests and reviewing which of the three would provide the best, most continuous flow of interesting information. Finally, I decided upon one. The one that is affecting every US citizen and many more abroad. From the lowest class to the wealthiest, from the floor scrubbers to the CEOs and from the forward thinkers to the naive, the current state of the US and world economy is a topic that provides a gold mine of an opportunity to a curious and motivated researcher such as myself.
Having been raised in a family whose prosperity and future is directly linked to the economy, I have attained an addiction to business and money. My mother, a stock broker, and my father, a business owner, have provided a home that has consumed my upbringing in business. So, it would make sense that the topic that provides the most personal interest would be that which provides an in-depth look into the massive and complicated engine that drives the US economy. This topic will give me an opportunity to delve into the specifics of our economy, and our stock market. I will be able to bring to the surface on my own, just how and why our economy is in such a crisis and track just where it is headed. In doing this, I will also be able to answer many of the questions I have always had about the influence and workings of the once mighty American dollar.
This is a topic that is so current and so important that it is some how garnering more media attention than Alaskan governors. The information available on this topic was, and will be for quite sometime, extremely current, and present in vast quantities. Indeed, the daily stock market report is usable information. Moving past the givens though, the news reports and newspaper articles released daily combined with articles in literary releases such as The Week and The New Yorker will provide massive amounts of information. Finding information less than two weeks old will be no problem, indeed much of it could be delivered to me through RSS feeds. It would seem then that this project would be a piece a cake. With so much information, how could it possibly be a challenge to research such a topic?
Ironically, the massive challenge this topic poses is the amount and type of information available. This is a topic that is interpreted, not reported, by our trusted new sources. There is no line that determines whether our economy is good or bad, there is no scale to which we can put our dollar and determine just how good it is. We tend to leave those kinds of decisions up to professionals. Professionals who seem to specialize not agreeing. Therefor, the challenge of this topic lies in the task of attaining and sorting through the information available, determining what to trust and what to disregard. Almost all the information I have researched and attained so far can be determined from hundreds of different views. The complexity of our economy combined with the vast amounts of conflicting information available for it will provide a thought provoking and very challenging research topic.
Personally, I can’t wait to get started on this topic. This is a time in the story of the United States that will probably never be seen again, at least not in my lifetime. I am itching to utilize such a time to take an in-depth look into the how’s and why’s of our current economic crisis. This is a topic that I know receives a resounding yes to all of the criteria required. This topic is evolving everyday. The stock market is unpredictable from one hours to the next and it seems that everyday there is the announcement of another merging. The complexity of our economy will provide and extremely challenging task of interpreting information. However, I know that I can face the challenge of this topic due to my personal interest.
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