DD209 Running The Economy : TMA01 pretty much finished.

Part 1 of the course, weeks 1 & 2, have been pretty much completed. The chapters were reasonably straight forward (not easy to understand - but well laid out) and the online tutorials were very good, certainly got you thinking about what you'd read and made me go back and re-read things.

The TMA also covered all that the 2 chapters had to offer, whereas in previous courses you only had to concentrate on one aspect or part of that section's material, for example in A222 Philosophy it was one of four chapters in that a particular book.

It is a bit difficult to discuss this TMA without infringing on the OU's social media rules as the answer is not, as in previous TMAs, your personal thoughts and ideas, but specific answers relating to the data in question.

The Student Notes accompanying the TMA were very helpful in pointing you towards where you needed to look, but I'm not sure I would be as happy with answering the questions without also looking at the https://www.khanacademy.org/ website and the YouTube series of videos from UCBerkely (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJwuQ6VLi1U) especially regarding the macroeconomics current and capital account balances.

The word count as also very tight which was in the end a good thing, as it meant you had to stay focussed on answering what was asked, and not drifting off on unrelated tangents.

So, unless I have an epiphany between now and the cut-off date regarding flows, stocks, balance and surpluses, the TMA is pretty much as good as its going to get.

Now the question is will my tutor be a prompt marker, I certainly hope so. I'll spend the rest of this week sorting out the revision notes and then hopefully start Part 2 on time on Saturday. Keynesian theories and real economics, looking forward to that.