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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.

This article talks about the situation in Spain, the government is imposing a new plan for its budget, they unveiled taxes hikes and spending cuts that aims at shaving €65 billion off the state budget in aperiod of two and a half years. Some of the cuts will be on subsidies for miners which has caused a lot of protests. The president of Spain says that the situation that they're living now will determine Spain's future. The measurtes taken include a wage cut for civil servants and members of the national parliament and a new wave of closures at state-owned companies. Spain will also speed up a gradual increase in the retirement age from 65 to 67.

This article talks about the tragedy of commons. The governments are ignoring that instead of reducing the costs and the money used in the public sector they could try to cause an economic growth. This would be better for everybody because the economic growth reduces the deficits better than spending cuts. If we are doing spending cuts in the future we will have to spend a lot of money to fix the common resources and facilities used by all, including our air, water, and public infrastructure. If the problem amount then we will have more difficulties to solve them in the future, we can't leave them for the future generations because we have created those problems and we must solve them.

The recent drought in the pass summer in the Midwest has resulted in a decrease in crops. As a result, not only that restaurants have to struggle with high fuel costs and inactive economy, they also have to struggle with higher food costs with poorer quality. For example, a restaurant used to offer a bowl of pasta at $8.95. However, in the late August, the price jumped to $9.95. Eggs cost 18% more than they did a year earlier. Restaurants need to adjust menus, reduce portion sizes, even consider staff cuts, and also increase prices of their food in order to sustain their businesses.Experts predict that the overall food costs could possibly rise at 5% to 20%. In consequence, customers are less seen out in restaurants. This relates to price mechanism and equilibrium. Lower supply of food shifts the supply curve to the left. This means that the amount being supplied and demanded is different. Producers then must have to raise prices to adjust to higher costs of production. In consequence, amount being demanded at a new price is decreased, setting a new equilibrium price and quantity. This is a downside for the producers since they must increase price to adjust to higher food costs, but because of that, less is being demanded. The restaurants can either choose to lower their price to the original in order to attract customers or remain at the increased price. Either way, restaurants are still affected.

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."

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.

This article talks about the decline in deforestation in Brazil of the Amazon. It states that the deforestation in brazil has decreased dramatically from its peak in 1995, at 30 000 square km per year to 4656 square km this year. Although this doesnt seem as alot of space..its actually the size of The New York state. This has all happend due to the rising awareness of the Government to preserve the Amazon. Althoigh enviromentalists are still not completelty happy because the Brazilian government recently signed an agreement in favor of the farmers cutting down trees to increase agriculture. The Brazilians government is planing to reduce deforestation to 3925 by 2015. this is a market failure because by cutting down trees it affects the oxygen levels in the atmosphere increasing the effects of global warming.

This article talks about how the government is trying to Real GDP of the country by lowering the taxes on exporting oil prices. By doing this the governmnet has enevitably increased the Real GDP because siince the oil firms FOP cost less they can now supply more oil, also the price will rise from 42$ per barrel to 70$ per barrel meaning that the oil firms will even make more of a profit. Again since the taxes have decreased it will cause foreign investments in the oil industry of Argentina since they just discovered that Argentina is setting on one of the biggest oil deposits. so overall, the long term aggregate will shift to the right, an increase in the real GDp

Argentina has devised a new system of export taxes on oil shipments that will cut taxes, as the government seeks to encourage investments to revive production. The change means energy companies will receive $70 per barrel of exported oil, up from $42 previously. Argentina controls the price of oil exports in order to guarantee domestic supply. The reform means that the state will only retain the difference between the market prices, meaning increased revenue for oil companies that export crude. The long run aggregate supply is expected to shift the right, an increase in the real GDP.

I thought this article was relatable since we are all students and looking at internships in the future is something many of us will have to go through. In this article, it explains that sometimes students are reluctant to take up unpaid internships. This is because even though it would be very good for work experience some can not afford to not get paid. Being a student is expensive: having to pay for their education, a place to live and everyday essentials. I thought this was a very good example of opportunity costs, either gain the work experience but have to cut down on living costs because you are not getting paid or find a paying job but that might not best suited for your interests. Another issue they mentioned was that if all interns were obligated to be paid that many companies would cut back or completely get rid of their internship programmes. So this was another example of opportunity cost, either have fewer internship programmes and positions and, if you are lucky to get the job, get paid or, continue to have many unpaid internship positions.

Thailand's baht appreciated extending a rebound from last month's three-year low to 4 percent, as U.S. lawmakers' failure to resolve a budget issue decreased demand for the dollar. Thailand also sees an increase in exports shipments of 3.9 percent in August, allowing the country to see a current-account surplus of $1.3 billion for the month. This shows how currencies can appreciate as an effect of another country's depreciation. Here, we US dollar depreciating due to less demand for it. Moreover, Thai baht also increases, supported by a current-account surplus.

The drought damaged the corn and soybean fields in the U.S. This caused drop in supplies in two crops to below year-earlier consumption levels for the first time since 1974. Prices have rose from 8.49 on August to $18 on September, but dropped again to $15.04 on October 3. This clearly shows both swift in supply, which set a new market equilibrium and price mechanism that adjusts the price of a product the new equilibrium. As the natural disaster swifted the supply curve, the price rose, but because the price was out of equilibrium price, the price dropped..

A ruling has been passed leaving medial device makers stuck with an excise tax on sales of replacement hips, implantable defibrillators and other FDA-approved devices. This tax is intended to help finance the health law's board expansion of insurance coverage and is expected to raise $20 billion by 2019. The tax, which will commence January 1st 2013, has already affected some manufactures. Few companies will be able to pass all or even a small amount of the tax onto hospitals or distributors, resulting in many companies to begin putting cost-cutting plans in place. It is expected that smaller companies will take the worst hits, small device makers could see earnings per share fall by 10%. Because the tax is on total sales, rather than profits, companies with the smallest margins, such as unprofitable start-ups, will face the deepest impact. The tax looms at a difficult time for the industry, as patients will then delay elective procedures. Unlike other health-care sectors, analysts don't expect device makers to benefit much from the expected flood of newly insured patients because they depend largely on older patients who are already covered by Medicare.

This article talks about the importance of caring about the environment because this year there have been alarming weather activities possibly caused by climate change: Droughts, floods, the record melting of Arctic ice and the recent Superstorm Sandy. We can´t affirm that this happened because there is a change in the climate but we have to admit that this is one of the possibilities. If we don´t do nothing the situation will be getting worst. The water level is increasing more than we have predicted and many specialists admit that San Francisco and other cities near the coast might be under water in 20 years. Retrospect, we have neglected the full costs and hidden environmental price tags of economic progress. Only if we are aware of the externalities of our actions can we then build a more organic living environment and actively cut down emissions.

This article describes how the recession, the fall of GDP growth in the business cycle, affects not only the economy of one country, but also external economies will be affected and leads to negative externalities.

This article is about how the current recession is affecting the business cycle. It has had a toll on not only firms and businesses, but also on non profit organizations such as charities working in Africa. Currently, I would say that the business cycle is in one of the 'trough' points. This is because of the ensuing recession. However due to this, funds going to charities are now being cut off.

I think this is a very interesting article because you do not often hear about charities threatened by recession.

China's growth has slowed to its lowest rate since the financial crisis in 2009 with second-quarter growth of 7.6% - down from 8.1%. The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, warned last week that the economy "still faces relatively huge downward pressure". Consumer inflation had been lower than expected and import growth, in addition to producer price deflation, has also worried investors. The government has already cut interest rates twice in a month and lowered the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves three times since November. Several economists continue to remain optimistic and suspect China's economy will progress in the third-quarter.

"The U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. " and the unemployment rate is down to its lowest level since December 2008 by this february, even though there are still a lot of problems, like people who got cut off on their jobs are still a lot, but in general, the employment rate got higher, we can tell from the graph this article gave to us.

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.

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.

This article discusses the problems facing fiscal policies concerning cutting taxes and increase government spending