Group items tagged

This is a great article as it hints at the actual influence of a change in monetary policy. It further suggests that in most cases, such as the one described, monetary policy alone cannot revive growth. 

The article talks about Japan's monetary problem in bond markets, which has threatened to undermine the country's battle to end deflation and stimulate growth in the giant economy. This causes the banks to expand the monetary base. However, Japan is still in debt and now it has more money struggles. Governor Haruhiko Kuroda is looking for a way to combat falling price and he declares that he will even double Japan's monetary base. But again, the debts of Japan is "twice as much as the size of the country", thus Japan is vulnerable to rising borrowing costs. Fortunately, the government uses pushing government spending, boosting asset prices by raising asset price inflation expectation, and increasing the country's GDP as solutions; and they do work.

The IMF, International Monetary Fund, points out that US's economy is likely to see a 1.5 or 2% growth without the tightening fiscal policies. IMF also points out that there is very low private demand in Great Britain. They suggest government to adjust its initial fiscal plans. We can see that this relates to the use of fiscal policies and their impacts. Here, we can notice that instead of boosting economic growth, US fiscal policies, which I believe is the fiscal cliff. The government's plan is to increase tax rates and decrease government spending. This could possible reduces income and slows the growth of the economy.

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.

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%.

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 United States remains desperate for faster growth and stronger job creation as it continues its slow recovery from the 2009 recession. Peter Blair Henry, the dean of NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business states private investment is falling $1 trillion short per year due a to disputes over the "fiscal cliff," the federal borrowing limit and other issues." Monetary policy and fiscal policy are working at "cross purposes" - one is expanding while the other contracts." Governments should save money during times of economic prosperity and spend it to boost the economy when growth decreases. Lawmakers should prioritize predictability in policymaking to trigger private investment and government investments, particularly in education, should be off-limits to cuts. Henry points out that a solution to closing the wage gap is to produce more skilled workers. Raising taxes on the highest tax bracket may also be part of the solution to overall sustainability concerning the fiscal side, but not a solution for income inequality.

Canada's economy seems to have taken a hit as housing, jobs and exports fell. First there was a 21,900 jobs loss in January plus a 58,000 decrease in Canadians looking for work. In addition, exports fell 2.1%, exports to the US alone dropped, 4 points and imports fell as well. Furthermore a 19% reduction in the housing industry topped Canada's misfortune these past 2 months. Many Canadians are questioning the actions of the conservative government as economic growth is slowing to a crawl.

I think that you have chosen a very nice and interesting article because it's related to our actual topics. Is a good example about the importance of the exchange rates in the exports. If a country's exchange rate becomes stronger, then this makes the country's exports relatively more expensive to foreigners. According to the law of demand, this will cause the quantity of exports to fall. Another think to highlight is the increase of the unemployment rate, this will probably decrease the consumption because However, if people expect economic conditions to worsen then they are likely to reduce their consumption today in order to save for the future. In brief i think that it's a great article to talk about the aggregated demand, macroeconomic and the monetary policies.

I find this article particularly interesting because i never knew that Canada was suffering so much from the recession. Since it states in the article that 21,900 jobs were lost means that the household cinsumption must be very low a resulting in a low agregate demand, and since the agregate demand is low firms gain less proffit and therefore have to cut costs which in this case would be workers.

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.

In this article author describes the main news - new additional jobs and overall improving economic state of Australia: "Full-time employment jumped by 17,800 and part-time employment was up by 53,700." The total workforce has been increased, altogether, it served as a sign of the improvement in economic conditions of the country. To keep the growth at the same level, the monetary policy has been eased up. Previous rate cuts are beginning to have a positive effect on the economy. The housing market shows some improvement. But the strength of Australian dollar is the main source of concerns: "The Australian dollar jumped by more than half a cent to $1.036, as traders became less hopeful that another interest rate cut was on the way."