Partha's Econ Blog

1. Define & explain GDP.
=>Gross Domestic Product is the total official measure of the market value of all goods and services produced within the geographical border of a nation in a specified time period which is equal to total consumer, investment and government spending with value of imports subtracted from value of exports.
2. How exactly is this figure determined?
=>GDP is calculated by adding private consumption or consumer spending in a nation's economy, sum of government spending, sum of all the country's businesses spending on capital and the nation's total net exports (calculated by subtracting total imports from exports). In other words, GDP figure can be determined by three basic components-consumption (the amount that consumers pay for goods), investment (the amount of money spent on new production facilities), services (the amount that consumers pay for the services they use).
3. Explain how "trade deficit" (net exports) is subtracted or added to achieve a total.
=>Trade Deficit is the difference of total exports minus total imports. The higher this figure is, the more trade deficit a nation faces. For example, according to the US Census Bureau of Economic Analysis through the Department of Commerce calculated that the March 2008 exports was $148.5B while the imports was $206.7B, resulting in a goods and services deficit of $58.2B. March exports was $2.6B less and imports was $6.1B less compared to February 2008 trade deficit.

As the car experts from edmund.com suggests that if someone looks at a car for mere transportation purpose, then it's not worthy to buy a new car, instead buying a used car would be a better choice. Since I don't look at cars as a mean to show off my style, then it won't be a good decision to buy a new car. There's also other aspects that I consider in buying a used car. Other benefits included in buying a used car are-it costs less in insurance, bigger bargains are possible for the smart used car shopper.

After considering all these aspects, I decided to buy a 2006 Mercedes-Benz C-Class. It's monthly payment would be $469.51 for 60 months, thus paying almost $21,676 in total at the end to own this used car. I decided to buy a 2006 model as I don't want to buy a car that's too old or too new. An old car will require more maintenance while a new car will cost more to buy. So, I wanted to buy something in between. A 2006 model fits exactly into that need.