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UK expects an increase in the Consumer Price Index to 3pc by June 2013 and to remain above 2pc until early 2016. In comparison, wages are only expected to rise at an average of 1.5pc. This will put more pressure on household as they have already seen a higher cost of living, which has risen four times more than wages. The recent increase is a result from petrol prices and energy bills. The bank's aim has been at 2pc, but the Chancellor may change the mandate. Another interesting point is the Chancellor may change the target inflation measures to CPIH- includes housing costs- and RPIJ, which is an alternative way of calculating retail prices. This article obviously relates to inflation rate. We can see the use of CPI as a measure for inflation rate. We can see that inflation rate does affect people with high cost of living and also people which has fixed income. Here, although many people does not have fixed income, they are still affected by the inflation due to the slower increase in the wages. We can also see that in order to reduce inflation, it does not only involve the government, but also the banks of those countries.

I found a similar article today in a Spanish newspaper and I decided to blog it in bookmark because it is about economics and politics. So I looked for the same article in English and here it is. It is very interesting because it is short, concrete and very actual. It is about Mariano Rajoy, talking about the recession. He thinks that is very important to be united, coordinated and that Countries that can afford stimulus policies should implement them, while other nations should focus on reducing their budget deficits. Also he said that is very important that the Latin countries must avoid protectionist policies. I wonder how the conference in Santiago will end because they will determine the future economic policies.

It's a nice article about the consumption in India. The consumption do durable and non-durable goods in India is decreasing at the same time as the inflation is increasing. The value of money is not the same as it was before, so the consumer can't buy the same quantity of products and this reduce the output of the consumers. The interest rates are relatively high so the households prefer to save money at a higher interest rate than loan money from the bank. The decrease of the consumption is real problem for the industrial production, according to the author I think that lower interest rates and reform measures may be able to revive the consumption. Also in my opinion the government should think about new monetary policies to reduce the inflation because the inflation at 10.8% is a serious problem.

This article talks about how Indias consumption is straining. Since the inflation is so high at a level of 10.8% the money has begun to lose its value and therefore the consumption of durable and non-durable goods has decreased as we can see in the article by 8.2% and 1.4%. Causingg the production to decrease by 0.6% further more making the economy suffer more. Although in the article it states that low interest rates and reform measure might be able to increase the consumption of the economy and therefore decrease the already hight inflation rate.

This is a perfect example of how protectionism policies are put to effect. This article talks about how protectionism policies in the EU have to increase in order to protect the fragile recovering economies. It states that there were about 150 new protectionism policies introduced last year nad 18 measures have been dismantilled. "All of us need to stick to our pledge to fight back against protectionism. It is worrisome to see so many restrictive measures still being adopted and virtually none abolished," said EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht. Trade protectionism was also an important point raised in the G20 Summit taking place in Saint Petersburg on 5 and 6 September 2013.

PARIS - President François Hollande of France has begun a major charm offensive to convince the world that France is open for business in a bid to lure back investments, which have slumped since he took office. In this article author talks about the measures taken by the president of France François Hollande. Recently he has gathered chiefs of the largest multinational companies and investment funds to speak about the needs of France in the investments. He has admitted that France may appear as a country with some complexity in the process of investment, however, France is ready to open itself up. Article also talks about some other aspects one of them is the measures taken by the government related to government spending and taxation.

This article talks about an increase in the excise duty on soft drinks which are already subject to a 23pc VAT rate. With this measure the government is trying to reduce the obesity and to increase the revenues of the government. I think that this is a good idea because the problem of obesity is very concerning. Also the costs of treating the obesity are very high (in Spain the government is paying 37 million each for treating the obesity) Many doctors says that the obesity is the epidemic of the XXI century. The fat tax has been introduced in some countries in Europe. The problem is that these taxes are very unpopular because the food is a necessity product. The biggest impact of a tax increase would be felt by the young and lower income groups who are the biggest consumers of soft drinks.

Hong Kong government has decided to impose 15% excise tax on property in Hong Kong that is bought by foreigners. This is a difficult measure for many foreigners wishing to purchase houses in Hong Kong. Some foreigners that has been around for several years are also not feeling as happy as before. Some clients are also thinking about leaving. The government primary reason is to protect its economy from inflating property resulting from foreign investments, low interest rates, and limited supply of housing in the market. Clearly, this situation is related to the topic of excise tax, or specifically, ad valorem tax- fixed percentage is charged on a particular good. This has led to an increase in price, which leads to a fall in demand from foreign investors that wish to invest in Hong Kong properties. This shows that properties are in fact elastic products, but government is able to impose tax since it does not affect the producers dramatically and it does not affect the majority of the consumers. Only foreign investors are affected. Realtor can still generate sales from local investors.

It is an article about the recession and unemployment in Spain. The unemployment is a very serious problem in Spain because the rate of unemployment is about 25% or more so is a lot. This article report that the Spanish situation is stabilizing but we can´t assume that is the end of the recession and the start of the new business cycle. The business cycle is the periodic fluctuations in economic activity measured by changes in real GDP. Output cannot continue to fall for ever as there will always be some people with jobs to maintain a given level of consumption, foreigners will demand exports, governments will continue to spend by running budget deficits, and people will be able to use savings to finance their consumption. Additionally, the low demand for money for investment will result in lower interest rates. Thus, aggregate demand will pick up, the economy will enter the recovery phase, and the cycle will repeat itself. So after the recession the national economy of Spain will suffer an economic growth, the amount of the goods and services produced by an economy over time will increase.

This article talks about how the recovery in the economic growth in India has weakened after three months of straight-increase, however the economic growth of India remains positive. This situation has been manly caused by the fact that there has been a slowdown in consumer sectors and investor demand and mantaining the confidence for these two would be essential to ensure a sustained economic growth. The BluFin Business Cycle Indicator (BCI), aims to meet everthing of the business cycle, and took into account five areas -- capital markets, foreign trade, policy, real economy and survey to determine and measure this situation

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.

Due to big events like the Olympics, the country receives a lot of overall income due to all the visitors of the such events. It will boost up the GDP since it measures all the assets produced in the economy and due to the event more assets are produced than normally.

It's a great article about the relationship between the consumption, the investments, the government spending and the economic growth. The investments of the firms in the UK and the government spending of the UK government related to the Olympics have brought important benefits to the consumers. The consumption (Consumption is the total spending by consumers on domestic goods and services) in the UK have increased and this have produced an economic growth in the country. Also we can't forget that it have brought other benefits like tourists, fame, sponsors, new companies, new stadiums...

I like this article because it is very short and it is related to the topic of this week. It is about the GNI in Korea. The GNI is the growth of the national income, consists of: the personal consumption expenditure, the gross private investment, the government consumption expenditures, the net income from assets abroad (net income receipts), and the gross exports of goods and services, after deducting two components: the gross imports of goods and services, and the indirect business taxes. The GNI is similar to the gross national product (GNP), except that in measuring the GNP one does not deduct the indirect business taxes. The GNI of Korea has experimented a very high grow this year, it is almost the double of the GNI from the year 2002. The nominal GNI from the last year was $118.7 billion, this information is based on the assumption that the country's nominal GDP expanded by 3.2 percent.

The article does not talk about the whole aggregate demand, but rather focus on one component that contributes to aggregate demand. The article talks mainly about exports in Spain, contributing to its nation's economic growth. Spain's exports figures have increased despite the recession phase. The exports have broke a record of the least trade deficit since 1998. Exports increase to 222.6 billion euros in 2012 from 215.2 billion euros in 2011, which is the highest exports since 1971. Spain's trade deficit decreased 34% as imports fell 2.8%. This is due to changes in exchange rate and improvements in competitiveness. Apart from that, measures like labor law changes have improved investors' confidence.

The coral reefs in Sweden is an important common resource where it provides habitat for many marine life and maintains biodiversity. However increased human activities such as trawling and eutrophication has caused the number of coral reef sites from 3 to 1 and the last remaining site is in bad condition. Coral reefs, once damaged causes many of the species of marine life to disappear and extremely difficult and time staking effort is required to restore. This is an example of "tragedy of commons" and adequate measures must be made to prevent further tragedy from happening.

This article talks about the decline in coral reefs due to a virus affecting their growth. This is a huge problem for the oceans because coral reefs support around and estimated 75% of all sea life and with out them, well we wouldnt have any fish to catch. So the survival of corals in our seas is absolutely essential.

This article clearly shows the way price and taxes changes the demand on tobacco. It gives us a good description of that products. So after that article we can conclude that tobacco is not that price sensitive. And attempts of the government to reduce the number of consumers by increasing taxes did not really work. The conclusion of the article makes it really clear and easy to understand: "From the above discussion it is evident that the price of elasticity of value is an important measure of the changes that will occur when a tax is imposed on tobacco products, this value is important in that it can help in determining the appropriate tax value that should be imposed in order to reduce tobacco consumption. Taxes on the other hand should be fair and depending on the price elasticity value of tobacco products certain groups in the economy may be unfairly taxed whereby poor individuals in the economy may have a greater tax burden than higher income individuals."

This article indicates how economists measure demand and supply changes in prices or income. It also points out two extreme cases where the price will get the extreme values. They are Perfectly price elastic and Perfectly price inelastic. I think these are pretty interesting informations that we can go further in order to understand more about economics and its systems.

This is an article of interest because it hits on a variety of things that we have and are continuing to study: import tariffs, the WTO, global trading in general, and the effects that each nation's actions have on one another.

This article raises awerness of the potencial risks that protectionism polices, import tariffs in this case, might have on the economy. If the WTO talks fail and Ukraine increases import tariffs it could have huge consequences with its trading partners as the local firms of the trading partners will suffer heavy losses, potencially leading to that specific export sector closing, which in time would effect the economic growth of the exporting country/countries. That is why there always has to be a balance with protectionism policies, iit must both benefit the importer and exporter

United States proposed a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a goal of reaching a deal by year-end. The U.S. aims to discuss the trade deal with other nations during the World Trade Organization meeting. The TPP talks aim to establish a free-trade bloc that covers 800 million people, a third of world trade and accounting for 40 percent of the global economy. The goal is to promote remove trade protectionisms and also set standard for workers' rights, environmental protection and intellectual property rights. This article can be related to our topic this week as it involves trade protectionism. This TTP deal argues against protectionism measures as they believe the removal of protectionism will promote growth. For instance, Obama believes that more export will provide more U.S. jobs. On the other hand, opponents against the deal state that the deal will only provide multinational corporations powers against national policies in the name of free trade.

This is quiet a good example of how countries defend themselves from imports. In this specific case the USSR has haulted imports from Lithuanian of dairy imports, turning up pressure on the EU. Its haulted the trade because it fears that the imported goods arent up to quality or standard, but its also a strategical move as nearly 85% of all eastern blocs dairy exports go to Russia which would affect Russia's own local dairy production. This hault in imports creates loses for the overseas firms and alows Russian local firms to recover and gain the upper hand. Although its portrayed as a safety measure in the article i think its more a strategical move towards upping the Russian dairy industry!

This article gives an example of how the value of the currency may benefit the economy but also affect the economy in the short and long run. Venezuela has faced food shortages in the past years, so the government decided to devalue its currency, in order to ease this shortages that are progressively increasing. However, it is expected that this measure will increase inflation and eventually weaken the economy more than it already is. As bolivars are worth less, then less American dollars can be exchanged, affecting the economy and the shortages becauseless imports can be purchased, and some of these imports are really essential (e.g. cornmeal, chicken, sugar, etc), and as it is stated Venezuela is really dependant on imports. This is a perfect example of how a weak currency may be positive yet really negative at the same time.