When you're in a situation like Ukraine's, the last thing you want to worry about is stabilising your countries financial situation. Many western consumers have invested in Ukraine and, with the recent turmoil, some might worry that their investment will be worth nothing, soon. However, Ukraine's Finance Minister has stated that there is a plan to "restructure" the Ukrainian economy without defaulting on all the bonds sold to foreign investors. This might give those anxious investors a bit of comfort, but it's still hard to say whether the minister will be able to keep his word...

The situation occurring in India right now exemplifies the conflicts behind allowing MNCs to embed themselves in a developing economy. FDI is a great source of income for developing economy, being an instantaneous source of employment for in that economy and being a mutually beneficial setup for MNCs in need of additional labor. The problem is that FDI tends to just be a band-aid approach, helping to sustain the economy and cover its financial issues but not really allowing said economy to progress any further. What certain government parties are saying to the Indian government is that they want MNCs to be forced into some sort of investment in India's future growth if those companies are going to embed themselves in the country.

KARACHI: The trade potential between India and Pakistan is estimated to be around $20 billion against the current around $3bn, according to a working paper published by ICRIER. However, non-trade barriers (NTBs) and bureaucratic hurdles continue to impede growth in the bilateral trade. Here we see the restrictions of trade between India and Pakistan are causing problems and both countries want to work out an agreement to end such unnecessary barriers. Estimates say that $20 billlion in trade could be made between the two nations, more than 6 times the current amount. What's help up the removal of trade blockages is the need to agree on goods and service regulations, especially in textiles and banking.

Japan's trade deficit nearly doubled in October, as growth in imports outpaced robust increases in exports to the U.S. and China, the Finance Ministry reported Wednesday. A weakening in the Japanese yen over the past year has helped exports, but it has also increased the cost in yen terms... This is the importance of looking at **how** payments balance. Though Japan has seen some significant increases in exports, most notably in the vehicle and chemical industries, too much money is still leaving Japan. Part of this may be due to the fact that many Japanese firms depend on foreign manufacturing. The government has plans to revitalize a large manufacturing sector of Japan, but the question now is how quickly and how much will it help?

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.

According to the article, a currency trader named "Richard Usher" has allegedly been manipulating market prices with the help of the other banks. Authorities from numerous countries, including Switzerland and the US, have been looking into these accusations, but so far they say they can't find anything on which to charge Richard or the other traders he supposedly worked with.

The article discusses how, in the past, the US government's response to foreign imports competing with the domestic steel industry has been to create trade barriers. However, as David Phelps, president of American Institute for International Steel, explains in the article, this practice takes away from the competition that should exist within a market, such as when two domestic steel industries are competing. On the other hand, what differentiates domestic competition and international competition is that US will lose output if it can't support its domestic industries.

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.

Now, I'm not much of the political type but, when I saw this title, I have to admit it drew me in. After about the first five or six sentences you can tell this is an article from the far left of the political spectrum (that being the hardcore democrats), but what I found really interesting about this article was how it looked at supply-side policy as this conservative dooms day device, rather than a neutral policy that can be used to anyone's advantage. I still think it is a strategy with its pros and cons, just like monetary or fiscal policy, yet it is interesting to see how it might benefit one social group more than another and how its implementation can lead to many economic issues.

Welcome back to the wonderfully confusing world of economics. In class we've only scratched the surface of monetary policy and, if there's one thing the world is good at, it's making things so much more complicated than you would imagine. However, as this article says, the FOMC is trying to bring us back to simpler time. They want to make policy decisions clear cut, a 1 step approach for deciding how to act during inflation, deflation, recession, and boom. Not a bad idea, but can they pull it off. I guess we'll find out.

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.

COLÓN, Panama - On one end of the Panama Canal, the nation's capital gleams with new skyscrapers; a subway, the first in Central America, is under construction; and new malls and restaurants fill with patrons. The city fancies itself a mini-Dubai on the Pacific. Can anybody here say "perfecto!"? I hope so, because it's really not that hard to say. Panama has had a huge amount of economic growth but, just as our economics text book said this weak, economic prosperity does not mean prosperity for all. In Colon, a name which I cannot spell properly because I have no access to accents on this computer, the streets run brown with sewage and there's more crime than 3 Detroits combined... ok, maybe only 2 and a half. Just think of that city from Dishonored, the video game, but worse. But seriously, this is a perfect example how a macroeconomics can't predict the welfare of each individual.

What I like about this article is not just that it's related to inflation (which is definitely a plus) but that it also discuss one of the factors of an economy affected by inflation, interest rates. This is very important because many articles will talk about how inflation has increased or decreased and how this is good or bad for the economy, but they don't explain in what way. You all get a sense for how the government of Nigeria intends to react to this inflationary event and what role the control of interest rates plays in the reaction.

You don't have to read much of this article to understand the gist of what the author is saying. As we all know, the business cycle fluctuates like a sin graph, except, at the same time, the real GDP steadily increases as more innovations are made the things can be done for cheaper. Paying attention to those ups and downs are important for governments because, when the downs occur, the government needs to put in more spending to cover for private industries and to try and stimulate the economy. However, what the US government has failed to do now-a-days is lower spending when the economy has built its way back up and above where it was before. This isn't because US citizens will start mass protests in the streets against a higher sales tax or less funding for the public education system, but because officials want to ignore the fundamental concept that, just like the economy went down before, so shall it in the future times.

Quarrying and aggregate supply firm Breedon believes profits will "significantly exceed expectations" after margins continued to improve in the final few weeks of last year. The company, which has its Scottish headquarters at Ethiebeaton in Angus, said market forecasts for the year look set to be significantly surpassed during a finish which escaped the disruptive influence of winter weather. We don't often think about how macro- and micro-economics can come together, but, for big companies, one is no more important than the other. Not only do you have to think about the margins and competition of your own market, but how your market is doing in general. It doesn't matter if your beating the other guys with a better price and more demand if that price is barely enough to cover what your supplying. On the flipside, your countries economy could be doing great and your factors of production most favorable but, if everyone's getting more benefit from those advantages than you are, it's only a matter of time before get too far a head. This article is a perfect example of where a European company has become enthusiastic about future profit predictions based not only on competition and margin but just on the welfare of the whole country in general

A lot of people have preached in the past about how we should destroy the social class system, about how the difference between wealthy and impoverished is an abomination and that the workers should rise up against their oppressive bosses and show them that the employers need their employees and not the other way around. However, most people probably haven't considered the economic angle to it. I hadn't, till I read this article, and I didn't more than the first few sentences to get me thinking. In a country where 10% can buy whatever they want and the other 90% can barely afford to feed their families, how do you get anything done. Those 90% probably do menial labor all day, creating goods and providing services for the 10% that act as their directors, and while this system works out fine for those 10%, your entire aggregate demand is still comprised of only the wants and needs of a tenth of your population. The fewer people you have with the ability to buy things, the smaller your macro-economic activity will be and, thus, your GDP. Now, while this kind of inequality is not fatal to a countries economic stability, per the previous reasons, it definitely puts it at a disadvantage to countries of equal wealth, resources, and population where demand is spread more evenly per capita.

The part which I believe is most important about this article is its demonstration of a business strategizing around macroeconomic change and not just microeconomic change. We mostly only think of this stuff on the small scale, pretending like we live in a global community in which a company can survive purely by being better than its competitors and not by having a stronger sub economy. The fact is, even in our growingly international market, that just isn't the case. Countries are like microeconomic ecosystems inside of one big habitat. Just because one has food in it and the other doesn't won't mean that the inhabitants of second ecosystem can just move to the first.

While there was a lot of economic lingo in here that I didn't completely understand, what I did pick up was the use of price increases to help the government make more money. The government makes its money off the financial interactions between households and firms. This is done through income tax, sales tax, etc. Starting to sound familiar? So, by increasing the price on diesel, the government ensures that large transactions will be made between the household and the firm, meaning they get a bigger chunk of dough. But the political motive behind this is that the government can now use the extras cash-money to fund public programs and what not for social benefit.

This article talks a lot about the recent "fiscal cliff" that congress or some government branch put together to ensure that the two United States parties, the democrats and the republicans, tried to come to some sort of agreement on where cuts can be made to try and fix the deficit. What's interesting about this article, more than the content itself, is the site it links to which talks a lot about how individual cities are doing their part to try and fix up the country. The fact is, the US has gotten some very bad grades lately (whatever that means), so mayors and representatives are getting citizens to invest in projects that will cost a lot of money but will go a long way toward a better future. Fixing up public resources, like water ways and levies, is crucial to trying to build a better community, even if the effects are long term. This is probably the closest we'll see to a sustainable economy.