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This article doesn't have as much economic terminology as I would have liked but it proves a very important point using a topic I really enjoy, chemistry. Helium is not thought to be a very useful nor uncommon element and while the former is completely untrue, the latter is just a bit misleading. It is the second most abundant element in the universe, the first being hydrogen, but it's not as easy for us to get. As most people know, helium is lighter than air, so every time we find helium we have to catch it before it escapes into the atmosphere. Once it makes it out of our grasp, whether via a balloon or from careless mining of natural gas reserves, it might as well be gone. In the late 20th century, the US government had a huge reserve of helium gas and so, to get rid of a lot of it, they artificially set the price so that it costed less than it really should have. Even though we now recognize the value that this noble gas has, the price still hasn't been increased properly and it is still being sold off by the tank full for birthday parties and other celebrations. Helium is used for a lot more than sounding like a chipmunk. Without it, technology such as rockets, lasers, and the Hadron Collider wouldn't work. What this all goes to show is that the scarcity of a product isn't just about how much of it exists, but how much of it we can get to.

Venezuela has joined Mercosur, six years after first applying to join the South American trading bloc. This article showcases features of economic integration, in this case customs union, which is a free trade area where members establish a common tariff and agree to other trade policies with non-member countries. Well, this article is particularly valuable also because it gives you that well-known sense of economic reality as a genuinely different economic world than that described in the economic theory. Countries cluster together for a mutual advantage, however, as opposed to comparative advantage concept and other highly cherished theoretical reasons, it always comes down to natural resources as vital sources of geopolitical influence, for instance oil, which is abundant in Venezuela. This can reasonably be inferred from the following quote: "Brazil said Mercosur was "also positioning itself as a global energy power in renewable and non-renewable resources". In the end, the disadvantages of economic integration are given, highlighting the fact that in economics there are perpetual advantages as well as disadvantages (influx of cheap agricultural products, little influence in decision-making processes). But then again, the disadvantages have to be explained within advantages in order to grasp the holistic situation (e.g. influx of cheap agricultural products forces Venezuelan farmers to cut down on their costs and improve on efficiency).

The article discusses the story of the shrinking U.S. trade deficit is essentially the story of the U.S. oil boom. The last time the U.S. came close to balancing out the trade deficit, at least in terms of its share of GDP, was just after a recession ended in 1991. The big issue is whether the U.S. can continue to expand its economy while also shrinking its trade deficit-something it hasn't been able to do for a generation or more. The U.S. will start exporting natural gas at some point over the next few years.