Why have countries in the Eurozone faced greater difficulties in promoting economic recovery? How does a country with its own currency find greater flexibility in overcoming a recession? 1. Impact of Currency and Bond Yields A striking feature of recent years is that countries in the Eurozone have been significantly more susceptible to rising bond …
A look at the changing profile of energy production in the UK. In the early 1960s, coal provided 81% of UK energy needs By 2010, this had fallen to 30%. At peak times in cold winters, coal use can increase to 40% of the UK’s electricity production. Despite a revival in coal production in the …
M4 Definition M4 is a broad money supply measure. Briefly, M4 includes all notes and coins in circulation, deposits at banks and building societies, plus assets which are considered relatively liquid (short-term bonds, commercial paper) M4 growth is currently negative. M4 lending to private sector is currently 6.0% lower compared to past 12 month (July …
Balanced Budget Fiscal Expansion is an attempt to increase aggregate demand through changing spending and taxation levels, whilst leaving the overall fiscal budget situation the same. Essentially, the idea is that if you increase spending and taxes equally, the increased government spending has a bigger positive impact on economic growth than the negative impact of …
Readers Question: What policies could Germany / the EU use to help save the Euro? The Euro has many problems. The most obvious outer problem is rising bond yields and the threat of sovereign debt default. Related to sovereign debt default is a banking default, e.g. from Spanish banks which would cause knock-on effects. But, …
One thing I really struggle to understand at the moment is why any country would want to join the Euro. The experience of the past few years is that membership of the Euro can devastate your economy. Given a chance, half of the members of the Euro would wish they had never joined. Greece, Spain, …
Readers Question: There just seems to be many paradoxical actions taking place in markets and economies at the moment. How do we explain? Paradoxes of UK economy Low interest rates have not increased spending / economic growth Despite recession, inflation has been above target. Despite recession and depreciation of Pound, current account deficit increased in …
A key test in understanding economics is being able to interpret data. If you really want you can present data in a way which supports your argument. Therefore, always be careful about how you look at data. This is an example of how you could view employment statistics in the US. Total employment This graph …