Scott Sumner and Tyler Cowen have given you theirs. Here is mine.

1. Ditch the concepts of aggregate supply and aggregate demand. Thinking of the economy as if it were a single business, what I call the GDP factory, is misleading. Also, there are two versions of aggregate supply, and no one can keep them straight. Version I treats the GDP factory as operating in a world without prices, or with fixed prices. Version II treats the GDP factory as operating with a sticky nominal wage, so that the profitability of output increases with price.

2. Instead, think of all recessions as adjustment problems. We are in a specialized economy, and at any point in time some people are employed in ways that do not earn a profit. These jobs are unsustainable, and the workers will be let go. Sometimes, the dislocation is temporary, and they can go back to their old jobs. But often the dislocation is permanent.

3. Arriving at sustainable patterns of specialization and trade requires two types of adjustment: static adjustment and dynamic adjustment.

4. Static adjustment means solving for the price vector that clears all markets. What I called Version II is an example of a static adjustment problem–getting “the” real wage to adjust the right level. This problem might exist, but I think it is at most one of many adjustment problems.

5. Dynamic adjustment means entrepreneurial trial-and-error to come up with businesses that employ otherwise-idle workers at a profit. Mathematical models are mostly focused on static adjustment problems, but I think primarily in terms of dynamic adjustment problems.

6. Adjustment is how we get out of a mess. How do we get into messes? To some extent, each unhappy economy is unhappy in its own way. But some elements that one tends to find include Minsky-Kindleberger manias and crashes, sudden changes in credit conditions, sharp movements in important relative prices (oil, home prices), and permanent shifts in the skill structure of work.

7. Kindleberger has a useful concept, which he calls “displacement,” which causes a large shift in wealth. For example, after a war, the winning side can feel wealthier. A bundle of technological innovations or new trading opportunities can have the same effect. The sense of increased wealth that arises from displacement can evolve into a mania. A decade after the end of the first World War, the U.S. experienced a mania. A decade after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. experienced first an Internet mania and then a housing mania.

8. Manias can create unsustainable patterns of specialization and trade and postpone the adjustment to deeper structural change. The mania of the 1920s helped to temporarily disguise the impact of the adjustment to the tractor, the truck, and the electric motor. Many jobs involving manual labor in factories and farms were becoming unsustainable. Ultimately, many of the new jobs were in wholesale and retail trade, but these jobs typically required a high school education. An important part of the adjustment process was that by 1950 a generation of poorly-educated workers had aged out of the labor force. Meanwhile, the U.S. experienced the Great Depression of the 1930s.

9. Similarly, the housing mania of the early 2000s helped to temporarily disguise the impact of the adjustment to the changes brought about by the Internet and globalization. Once again, the composition of the work force appears to be undergoing a shift, as signified by the low rate of labor force participation.