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As the article states: "The world's largest economies took a step toward common global guidelines for exchange-rate policies with a pledge Saturday to refrain from targeting their currency policies to gain a competitive trading advantage." This is well-involved in this week's topic, which is aggregate demand. Particularly, this article refers to its component, net exports (export revenue minus import expenditure, or simply X-M) and then its subsidiary component, changes in exchange rates. If a country's exchange rate becomes stronger, then this makes the country's exports more expensive to foreigners and vice versa. Manipulating with exchange rates can bring a certain country substantial trading advantage and this is what G-20 wants to overcome and allow free-trade market as it should be.

This article discusses the hard empirical evidence, arguing that, in fact, Japan is behaving rather responsibly and that other strong economies have themselves benefited from undervalued currencies. That said, it is true that politicians' short time horizons often lead to stealthy policy and large swings in exchange rates. Economists should therefore aim to promote longer-run cosmopolitan interests rather than shorter-run nationalistic agendas where possible.

The article was initiated by a series of event regarding a man, Mark Shuttleworth that transferred money to the South African Reserve Bank. Through powers granted under exchange controls legislation, the South African Reserve Bank imposed a levy of 10% to the money deposed. A big scandal started around the court cases which brought up several good points for the economy of South Africa. It was stated that controlling currency flows gives smaller economies more stability as well as independence. The free flow of capital would also cause account deterioration, inflation and currency devaluation. It was also mentioned that large institutions in South Africa (like its reserve bank) are not interested in red tape or levies, but some how imposed on on Shuttleworth. In addition, they stated that free trade comes as a cost that comes in a form of lost tax revenues and a loss of jobs in South Africa.

This article offers a glimpse of recent fluctuations in foreign exchange market. I will narrow my focus down to the USD. If the U.S. Federal Reserve decides to keep up the spending on Treasuries or mortgage-backed securities, this means that the supply of USD on foreign exchange market will be sustained or perhaps even increase. This means that should the demand for USD stay constant, its value will depreciate. However in the end, the expectations of investors concerning the future growth/future path of the exchange make up arguably one the most important share of a currency's movement.

The article talks about the reasons why countries keep foreign currencies. The main reason why the keep the reserves are to meet the international payment obligations in the long term and in the short term. Furthermore countries keep foreign currencies in order to pay imports or for commercial debts.

This article mainly focuses on China's economic growth and its fast approach to what could put it's economy in an equilibrium state."The rate, the spot rate and future rate, determined by the market supply and demand, basically are very close to the equilibrium rate," said Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China. He also warns that at this time China is trying to maintain low prices and if external governments begin to have inflation problems this could potentially create problems for China's economy. This comment was a directly linked with China's exchange rate against the US dollar, an issue that has yet to be addressed.

This article is about the current inflation rate in Great Britain and its unchanging status in the past four years. Jeremy Cook, chief economist at the World First foreign exchange company said, "Home-grown price pressures are also increasing with transport, food and utilities boosting upwards in the latter part of 2012; this will continue to erode wage value through 2013, hurting consumer confidence and limiting spending."

I find this article thoroughly bizarre. Apparently, South African had this huge deficit calculated to be 116.9 billion rand. I don't what the exchange rate on their currency is, but that part isn't that surprising. What's surprising, at least to me and nobody else in this article, it seems, is that they reduced the deficit to about 34.6 billion by-- get this --redoing their calculations. They neglected to include trade with foreign neighbors, which just so happened to help out their balance of accounts. I can see why the recalculation helped to clear things up and, essentially, made South Africa's situation better, but it's weird how the article refers to it as if the deficit "decreased" because the numbers were run under differing conditions. Am I crazy?

This article talks about the drop in price for the Australian dollar. Glenn Stevens commented on this drop and admits that the volatility of Australia's currency will deter investors. Obviously, volatility means there is the potential for a quick rise in exchange rate as well as a quick fall, but investors want something more secure, something that is steadily increasing, not a moving target.

The article talks about the effect of a fixed currency exchange rate in Venezuela.

More and more Americans are dabbling in currency trading and losing in spectacular fashion. Experts say the structure of the currency market makes it hard for amateurs to beat the house.

Pound sterling / euro exchange rate has increased, meaning that pound sterling appreciates in value. That is due to a run of good economic data and Britain's industrial output in June rose much faster than forecast and hit its quickest pace in two years. I believe demand for sterling, which reflects the value of its exports of goods and services rose because of the peak tourist season in Britain (urgency to buy foreign currency) and increased industrial activity. However, as far as many economic analysts are concerned, sterling will continue to weaken in a long run...

The article talks about the change in exchange rate and their value.