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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.

Currently the Obama administration is talking about finding new ways to create jobs and stimulate growth. However, it has proved to be unsuccessful, as the only policy that will really help is an increase in aggregate demand. The article explains that aggregate demand simply means spending: "spending by households, businesses and governments for consumption goods and services or investments in structures, machinery and equipment." At the moment, businesses should not to invest because there is lack of consumer demand. The federal government could increase aggregate spending by directly employing workers or undertaking public works projects yet this proves to be difficult. The author explains that the most important thing is for policy makers to stop focusing on debt and attempt instead to raise aggregate demand.

THis article talks about how the recession has effected America and what America really needs is an increase in aggregate demand. That is the increase in consumption, investments, exports etc. They say that a direct solution to increase aggregate demand would be an increase in aggregate spending by employing citizens in public projects controlled by the government and if that isnt enough then its all up to the citizens. It then talks about how consumer confidence significantly effects spending. that is if house holds feel that they are rich, then they dont feel the need to save and as a result of that they spend the money they were going to spend and vice versa.