AP/Honors Econ Make Up Discussion Articles

Even more worrisome

Spain’s banking system “is running out of liquidity and running out of collateral,” since collateral has to be pledged to the ECB when it provides funds.

This means Spanish banks are lending less, a drag on economic growt

Bank of Spain figures show that net capital outflows—including bank withdrawals and sell-offs of Spanish stocks and bonds—equaled more than 50% of the country’s economic output over the year ended July 31

taken in the Tazreen Fashions factory surfaced in the days following the fire. The retailer responded by saying that the factory was no longer authorized to produce merchandise for it.

"A supplier subcontracted work to this factory without authorization and in direct violation of our policies. Today, we have terminated the relationship with that supplier," Wal-Mart said.

Workers rights experts, however, claim that it's unlikely that retailers wouldn't know where their stuff is produced, as a matter of cost and production control.

"In order to be profitable, you have to control the supply chain, monitor quality, prices and the speed of delivery,

"It's strange that a company would say they had no idea who was making stuff for them."

The audits, completed by what it calls accredited or internationally recognized auditing firms, are carried out every six to 24 months. But the reports are not published online. Nor are they shown to factory workers, according to Nova. "There's no transparency. They never publish their findings as to whether or not there's a violation, so there's not much scrutiny about the audits," he said.

n order to keep production prices low, Nova said that companies rely on cheap labor, which often goes hand-in-hand with low wages, poor working conditions and safety concerns.

"It is such a poor country and so desperate for jobs that they ignore the most minimal labor rights standard," he said. "It's as if everything has to give way just to maintain these garment jobs. There's a fear that the labels will flee and go to another country.

Bangladesh's ready-made garments make up 80% of the country's $24 billion in annual exports, and the country has about 4,500 garment factories that make clothes for large global stores including

hope behind the policy is that numerical targets will lift some of the mystery surrounding the Fed's decisions.

As economic data is released, the public can base their expectations for Fed policy on a clearer picture of the central bank's goals.

"I support this approach because it would enable the public to immediately adjust its expectations concerning the timing of liftoff in response to new information affecting the economic outloo

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since late 2008 in an effort to stimulate the economy. While the unemployment rate has since fallen slightly to 7.9%, the Fed is still unsatisfied with that level and has been pursuing additional alternative policies to boost the economy further.

The Fed's policymaking committee is next scheduled to meet Dec. 11-12.