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This article is about a statewide initiative to identify and stimulate economic growth in Missouri, US. This initiative was put into place by governor Jay Nixon and looks promising. It will include all types of businesses to ensure that all aspects of the markets in Missouri are strong.

Fears are growing that Asia's recent troubles with inflation could go deeper than initially expected as countries bump up against labor shortages (in Singapore's case for example) and other problems commonly seen in times of too-fast growth. Furthermore, inflation concerns in Asia have focused on rising food costs exacerbated by bad weather and, more recently, higher oil prices amid political tensions in the Middle East

This article discusses an initiative by the head of states of several African countries to form a FTA between 26 African countries. The article discusses the advantages of this FTA such as very small countries working together to improve global trading but also the problems with creating it such as the political and social issues in Africa right now.

This Article highlights the problem of water scarcity in war-torn Iraq. The Scarcity of Water has caused the government to make it a priority in solving this problem along with UNESCO and the EU. Any story that involves Iraqi politicians cooperating to solve an issue must be a good sign weither they accomplish it or not. This Scarcity is a central and unifying issue and ironically may produce positive effects.

Nabil, I find this interesting since it associates scarcity with water. I recently read an article that talked about the implications of bottled water being treated as a luxury good in developed nations (branded water even!). And in your article water is being discussed as a scarce resource. Clearly, it would make more moral sense for less water to be sold as a luxury and more distributed to areas where it's scarce, but the profit motive steers the practice in another direction altogether!

Nabil, I also find this particularly interesting because I've always wondered about whether or not water availability will decrease as time progresses and the amount of human beings in the planet increases. I have always thought of water as being incredibly cheap if not completely free (go to a river and sip some water), and this makes it hard for me to think of water as being something that will be depleted any time soon.

This article considers the possible measures that the Maldives should consider in order to develop its not yet fully matured economy. Today, government intervention to reduce or diminish market failure takes many forms: direct controls, government regulation, government subsidies, taxation of negative externality engendering goods, etc. However, it has been strongly suggested that for a developing country such as the Maldives, "and given that there is no one perfect model of state involvement in the economy, effective and well managed Public Enterprises need to play a vital and integral role of the national economy." Further solutions for market failure in the Maldives are also discussed.

The article discusses the Chinese state's initiative to increase the minimum income tax threshold from 2000 yuan. This was done in order to 'boost domestic demand' - a rise in disposable income increases consumer expenditure in theory and thus boosts aggregate demand. The authorities are however cautious of the increase in income leading to inflation - this suggests that the authorities deem the Chinese economy to be near full employment of resources (according to the Keynesian outlook).

The Obama administration wants to complete free trade agreements with south korea, columbia and panama. They hope to create more jobs that were initially lost by foreign competition. The trade agreements will reduce the price of American products and therefore will increase the sales of these american goods. Obama said: "These agreements will support tens of thousands of jobs across the country for workers making products stamped with three proud words: Made in America,"