Why Do Some Countries Create Money?

Readers Question: Why is it, that some countries e.g USA, UK, Japan etc can electronically create money whereas India, Germany, Euro etc have to work, trade and manufacture exports and growth to keep pace with the above mentioned ? Any country could electronically create money if they wanted to. To summarise, the only good time …

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OBR Admit Failure to Predict the Double Dip Recession

One feature of the current economic malaise is that growth predictions for the UK economy have been consistently over-optimistic. For example, the Office for Budget Responsibility originally forecast economic growth of 5.7% between 2010 to mid 2012. The economy failed to meet this target, growing by just 0.9% during this period. To be fair to …

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Chinese Currency Manipulation

The Chinese government have been criticised for the ‘manipulation’ of their currency. They would prefer not to use the word ‘manipulation’ perhaps they have an unofficial exchange rate target to keep Chinese currency undervalued to promote growth and exports. At the moment China only pegs its currency against the dollar and not a wider basket …

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Helicopter Money Drop

A helicopter money drop is a form of monetary policy in which a Central Bank prints money and distributes it directly to households/consumers. The aim of helicopter money is to boost nominal GDP, overcome deflation and help reduce unemployment. In normal circumstances, printing money will be inflationary. Economists usually suggest helicopter money in a liquidity …

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Europe and Keynesian Economics

Recently, I was researching a post on US v EU unemployment. No.1 on Google (a news result) was a post with some observations on EU vs US economic policy. This paragraph caught my attention …But many European countries have completely mismanaged their budgets for continued government stimulus, which lends to the argument of free market …

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Fiscal Multiplier and European Austerity

The fiscal multiplier looks at how much an initial change in injections affects real GDP.  For example, if increased government spending of £1bn causes overall GDP to rise by £1.5bn, the multiplier effect is 1.5 If £1bn worth of tax rises causes real GDP to fall by £0.5bn, the multiplier effect is (0.5) Since 2009, …

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How To Improve the American Standard of Living?

Readers Question: What should the government do to improve the American standard of living? How could the President + Congress, make the biggest difference to improving American standards of living in the long run? These are a few policies which I feel would improve US living standards. 1. Reduce Unemployment. The rise in US unemployment …

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More on Quantitative Easing and Inflation

Recently, I posted about the current fall in M4 lending in the UK. The concern is that fears over possible future inflation are preventing decisive action to promote economic recovery. But, these fears are misplaced. The fall in M4 lending in the UK is a sign of a fundamental weakness in demand. Given this weakness, …

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