Paul Solman Answers Students’ Economic Questions

NewsHour:

Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes his Business Desk blog inside classrooms across the United States to respond to high school students’ most pressing questions about Wall Street, the recession and unemployment.
Question: How does it happen that the whole world is in a recession? –Kavion, senior, Central High School, Phoenix, Ariz.
Paul Solman: The whole world isn’t in a recession. China is growing; so is India; so is Brazil. Among them, those three countries alone have something like two-thirds our GDP and maybe nine times as many people as we do.
As to the parts of the world that are in recession — largely in Europe — it looks like the reason is because their citizens borrowed and spent “beyond their means.”