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Expansion, peak, contraction, trough; what defines a recession.
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Leading vs lagging vs coincident indicators — which is which.
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What GDP, CPI, and unemployment each measure; inflation vs deflation.
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Who does what: the Fed vs Congress — a top-3 SIE trap.
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Open-market operations, discount rate, reserve requirements, fed funds rate.
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Easy vs tight money and the transmission to bond prices and yields.
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Normal, flat, and inverted curves and what each signals.
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Strong vs weak dollar: who benefits; exchange-rate risk.
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Board of Governors, the twelve reserve banks, and the FOMC — which body controls which tool.
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Fed funds, discount rate, prime, and secured overnight benchmarks — which are set and which are market-determined.
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M1 vs M2: what counts as money at each level and why the definition matters.
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How reserves become deposits; the money multiplier as an intuition, not a promise.
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Expectations, liquidity-preference, and market-segmentation explanations for the curve's shape.
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Nominal return minus inflation; why a positive nominal return can still be a real loss (computed).
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CPI vs PPI vs core measures, and what each deliberately leaves out.
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Naming the regime from the growth-and-prices combination.
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Frictional, structural, cyclical and seasonal unemployment — and which policy touches which.
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Keynesian demand management, monetarism, and supply-side theory — the three labels exams test.
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Taxation and government spending; deficits, surpluses, and the debt they accumulate.
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Cyclical, defensive, and interest-sensitive industries as a descriptive classification.
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Current account vs capital account, and how a trade deficit connects to capital inflows.
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Floating vs pegged currencies; how interest-rate differentials move a currency.
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Energy and raw-material prices as an economic input: pass-through to consumer prices and margins.
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Capital mobility, globalization, and country/political risk expressed in economic terms.