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This article talks about a planned cut to the EU's seven-year budget of about £30bn. Considering the EU to be a macroeconomy, the government is cutting its spending. This decreases that part of the flow of income.

The U.S. is working on fixing it's fiscal policy. Congress is workig for "a stopgap spending measure to keep the government running for the last six months of this fiscal year". The U.S. is cutting it's spending and creating a budget to lower the gap in the debt that the U.S. is in. In the month of February, the spending was down by 3% from the year before as well. The government also had a temporary tax cut that brought in more revenue for them as well.

This is a very small article, but it summarizes how the Italian budget deficit will be decreased as the EU will help the government. In fact, the EU will work with the Italian government to repay the debts, therefore decreasing the national debts and help the government reach a balanced budget.

This brief article describes how the bank of England recently have decided through their Monetary Policy Committee to focus more on growth, after focusing heavily on inflation in the past years. Trade-offs are hopefully increasing growth whilst also maintaining the 2% inflation target.

Basically, article is about Egypt's endeavor to find foreign investors for financing infrastructure projects and increasing its dwindling foreign currency reserves. Two of the most important terms derived from the week 2 are scarcity and opportunity cost. Turkish investments of $20 bn dollars and 500 mio euros from the EU (depending on Egypt securying the loan from IMF) in Egyptian infrastructure and foreign currency reserves deficit have an opportunity cost of spending that amount of money for other purposes. In this article, Egypt's foreign currency reserves and budget are scarce, so Egypt wants to get money to reduce unemployment rate via economic growth (4.5 %). Here we also have the factor of production - this is capital which comes from investments in physical capital (infrastructure) and in my opinion also human capital (reducing unemployment, improving education and healthcare perhaps ...). One thing that will be crucial for Egypt is the factor of entrepreneurship.

This article describes the new tax on various medical wares such as replacement hips and defibrillators. The new excise tax is within the US, and the prediction is that it will raise $20 billion by 2019. The tax will affect smaller companies the most, and as much as 10% of small companies earnings per share may be paid in tax.

This article talks of the excise tax placed on replacement hips, implantable defibrillators and other FDA-approved wares. This was originally done to help fund the health laws expansion of insurance coverage. However, this tax is starting to hurt companies producing these goods as they are having to introduce cost cutting plans. "Stryker Corp. said in a statement Thursday that the $130 to $150 million in will owe next year could consume one-third of of its research and development budget." The tax is becoming a burden on companies as they must give the money to the government instead of their research funds.

The article talks about the USA economic growth in 2013, which is surprisingly improving after 2012. However, Bernanke is expressing that the cut the Congress wants to make (like budget costs cuts) would stop and even decrease the slow economic growth the USA is facing.

The article talks about the dangers of high inflation in the UK. It shows the problems people had to face in the past due to high inflation. Furthermore it makes suggestions on how to reduce inflation and where to reduce it to.

WASHINGTON - Airlines and airports across the country are preparing for across-the-board federal budget cuts due to hit next week as if they were a hurricane, although with even less certainty about how many flights they will have to cancel and how many passengers will be stranded.

This article talks about how the government is aiming for a federal budget surplus this year, and how the government needs the states to ease fiscal policy to do so. The goal is more public spending.

Everybody has an opinion and I for one understand this debt crisis very little. It's not that I don't think it's important, it's that I'm very vague on who exactly we owe money to, what the current plan is to pay it off, and why everyone else is up in arms about this. The econ modules in the textbook section this week said that, sometimes, the government *wants* the budget to be at a deficit. I still don't understand why but, my guess is, the US's current situation is not a good demonstration.

Fiscal policy is the set of policies relating to government's spending and taxation rates. Military spending is a part of government spending and is closely related to domestic industries, particularly in the U.S. The U.S. government is lowering the military budget, therefore decreasing aggregate demand both through government spending and through implications to other industries interwoven with military. So this is deflationary fiscal policy, which is reducing U.S. military power on a global scale.

The article talks about the importance of budget planning and spending.

OTTAWA - The Harper government is set to propose a number of new measures to close the U.S.-Canada consumer price gap, including the possibility of extending the tariff relief offered on sports equipment in the last budget to consumer electronics and other products. Put pretty simply, it seems that global corporations are using different prices on sports equipment and what not between US and Canada. In order to combat this, the countries are lowering their tariffs in an attempt to allow businesses to pass the savings onto consumers. The article doesn't give much details on the situation, but this is definitely a good example of how the manipulation of protectionist import controls can be used to affect the market.