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Brazil's central bank announced a $60 billion program on Thursday aimed at halting the slide of the Brazilian real, making Brazil the latest emerging economy to seek to prop up its sagging currency. Similar moves have been made by central banks in Indonesia and Turkey. I chose this article because it covers one of the most important aspects of foreign currency, which is the depreciation of it. The consequences of having a weak currency could be severe, as the value decreases in comparison with other currencies, for example Euros, therefore it will take more Brazilian Reals to buy Euros (1 Euro= 2.98804259 Brazilian Reals). In this case this depreciation of the currency has led to some action from the Central Bank in order to boost up the value of the currency. This does not only affect Brazil, it also happens to other emergent economies such as India.

In this article, the author talks about the Bank of England. Because of the recession, Bank of England tried to stabilize the state of the economy. So it has kept its stimulus programme of quantitative easing (QE) unchanged and also held interest rates at 0.5%. Quantitative easing is is an unconventional monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate the national economy when standard monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions, thus increasing the monetary base. The first quarter GDP figures, showing growth of 0.3%, were also felt to have reduced the need for more QE. Also, industrial output rose 0.7% in March from February, a bigger increase than forecast. Manufacturing output rose by 1.1%.

This article is about the European Central Bank finally deciding to cut interest rates, to provide as much liquidity of stocks as possible. They also plan on enabling smaller companies to get credit which was relatively difficult before. The bank believes that smaller companies are very important in Europe and they should have the opportunity to get credit as well. Annual inflation plunged to 1.2% in April, pressuring the ECB to cut rates and induce inflation. However economists believe that this decision will not have much of an effect. The sudden slump in price pressure also is making the ECB look into other policy changes to counter any further slide in inflation.

Central Bank of Russia will continue to cut interest rates to 8% at which central bank lends to commercial banks. This target is to be completed in early May. This action is done in the hope to boost Russia's economy after a slow down. In addition, inflation rates are beginning to decline. Lower interest rates will lower costs of saving and thus encourage people to invest or get a loan to consume goods such as houses. This will move aggregate demand outwards and as well ad economy's potential output. This, in turn, will encourage economic growth. As such, this method can be classified as a part of an expansionary monetary policy or reflationary policy.

It is a nice article about the central bank in my country Poland. The central bank in poland uses changes in interest rates to keep the inflation rate within the targeted range of 2.5% plus or minus 1%. This week the central bank has reduced the key rate by 25 basis points to 3 percent. As we know, a decrease in inflation will lead to the increase in consumption and investment. The consumption is the total spending of consumers in domestic products. With lower interest rates, consumers will borrow more money from the bank and they will spend more, so the AD curve will shift to the right. Investment is defined as the addition of capital stock to the economy. Lower interest rates will encourage the producers to spend more on investment. Another thing to take into consideration is that the decrease in inflation will make the exports from Poland more competitive in foreign countries where the inflation rate is much higher. Targeting inflation, whether explicitly or implicitly, is said to be beneficial as it results in a reduction in inflationary expectations. If the workers do not expect higher inflation then they will not make demands for increases in wages any higher than the expected rate of inflation and this will keep the costs of labour from rising excessively. Poland has enjoyed uninterrupted annual growth for the past two decades, and for a while after the financial crisis of 2008/9 the economy continued to defy the global downturn. However last year gross domestic product growth slowed to about two percent, less than half the pace in 2011, as infrastructure spending tailed off and the gloom from the euro zone started to filter through to previously bullish Polish consumers.

The author of the article talks about Indonesia. It focuses on the attempts of central bank of Indonesia to defend the rupiah, "which has slid some 12 percent so far this year amid a global emerging markets rout." The currency has fallen to its weakest levels since April 2009, as worries about the country's current account deficit and high inflation rate have sparked a sell-off of Indonesian assets. Sudden declines in rupiah and local stocks over the last week, necessitated central bank to take part. Emergency fiscal and monetary policies that were announced last week, had done little to improve the current situation. Therefore, currently to protect its currency, Indonesian central bank attempts to raise the rates.

This article talks about a joint monetary policy bewteen the central banks of different countries to provide liquidity support to the financial system. This will ease of the strain in the financial markets of the world. These banks have agreed to lower the pricing on existing temporary US dollar liquidity swap arrangemnets by 50 basis points. As a contingency measure, these central banks have also agreed to establish temporary bilateral liquidity swap arrangements so that liquidity can be provided in each jurisdiction in any of their currencies should market conditions so warrant.

This article tells that the Euopean Central Bank executive board member is not that much concerned with the euro exchange rate in specific, but rather the effects it has on the inflation.

Turkey's economic growth rate has decreased to 2.2% in 2012 after two years of rapid expansion. This is due to weak domestic demand and indirect effect of public expenditure from the European debt crisis. The GDP expanded 1.4% in the fourth quarter, half of the 2.7% forecast. The slow down in economic growth was largely due to Turkey's central bank tightened monetary policy implemented in 2011 and in early 2012 after Turkey's rapid expansion. This caused fear among the investors that the economy was overheating. Despite central's bank easing policies, Turkey still sees a slowdown in the rate of economic growth. We can notice that this slowdown in economic growth is largely due to decrease in investment.

LISBON: The Portuguese economy is set to contract by 2.3 per cent this year due to a sharp fall in domestic demand and disappointing export growth

This article basically talks about the decreasing growth of the Portuguese economy. It states that the Portuguese economy will contract by 2.3% this year due to a steep fall in aggregate demand and exports. This can only lead to negative consequences as the firms will start to sell less/produce less and therefore earn less of a profit or no profit at all. SO what these firms will start to do is cut costs of FOP which basically means lay off workers, raising unemloyment, further worsening the economy, because then the people laid off will buy less from other firms and the same process will occur over and over again untill you get to the economic situation of Greece.

Inflation in indonesia nearly reached a two-year high. It rose from 5.30 to 5.91 in only 1 month. This jump in inflation is due to climbing prices in staple foods. Analysts are warning that indonesia could see capital outflows if the central bank maintains its benchmark policy. This will provide an interesting test to indonesias economy.

This article shows how there are regional trade barriers within Africa.

The leaders of five East African countries signed a protocol on Saturday laying the groundwork for a monetary union within 10 years that they expect will expand regional trade.

This article is about the East African Community (EAC) choosing to pass a monetary union deal. The trade comprising of Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania has decided to adopt a single currency for all the five countries. They plan to converge their currencies and establish a central bank, helping them to harmonize fiscal policies and increase commerce. Kenyatta, the leader of the biggest economy in the east Africa say that 'Businesses will find more freedom to trade and invest more widely, and foreign investors will find additional irresistible reasons to pitch tent in our region'.

Asian markets have been hit with news of a liquidity squeeze in China's markets, but the South Korean won has hit a two year high. The country's current account surplus and the popularity of its bonds is strengthening the currency. However, because Korea is a heavily dependent export country, the government is intervening to stymie the growth of the won. In fact, the central bank has bought 2 billion dollars worth of the won to reduce the growth.

Here we have an article about the current value of the Euro. It is a perfect example of a situation when a country (in this case a group of countries) would like to have a weaker currency. Why the euro zone wants a weak currency? Because the country within UE are trying to increase employment and a low exchange rate means more exports and more domestically produced goods. The bad side of the weak currency is an increase in inflation however the rate of inflation in Europe is very low and unemployment is very high, so the European central bank will try to balance both values.

The British Pound and European Euro Exchange Rate has rallied to a one month high. The Euro to Pound exchange rate has dropped 0.7 percent on the day to 84.03 pence against its lowest since early October. The Euro has also lost ground to the American Dollar, which has done well recently. The Pound has also rallied to a 5 year high versus a much weaker South African Rand.

I found this article interesting as it shows two sides of the same coin. On the one side the pound where its estimated that the british economy has passed the recession and that the pound is going to rise in value, as it has rallied to a 1month high. On the other it states how the euro is still struggling against the dollar and the rand and that the central bank of eurpope is going to decrease the interest rates in order to spur the growth of the economy.