Shinzo Abe was first elected prime minister of Japan in September 2006. He showed commitment to fiscal policy reforms, including a balanced budget, but failed to improve the economy. With a popularity rating below 30 percent, he was forced to resign in 2007, having served for less than a year. Between 2007 and 2012, the [...]
Tag Archives | economics
The Chicago Plan—an alternative?
As one would assume, the time just following the Great Depression was one of great intellectual revolution in the field of economics. Just as economists today are studying to try to understand the causes and effects of the Great Recession, even proposing methods of possible prevention, so too were the economists in the decade after [...]
The 21st Century American Consumer
I recently went to my hometown of Spring Grove, Pa. to visit my parents for the weekend. While there, my mother and I stopped at a small farmer’s market to pick up some fresh produce. When we arrived, the small store was packed! Now I had never been in this store before, but my mother, [...]
QE3: More effective than QE1 and QE2?
Quantitative easing is an emergency monetary policy used during recessions. The Federal Reserve plans to buy $40 billion every month in mortgage-backed securities in the open-ended QE3 until the labor market improves significantly. QE3 is the third round of buying long-term bonds that the Fed will be using to target unemployment, which is a very [...]
Vital time for Occupy movement
The Occupy Wall Street movement is now almost four months old. It began with the spontaneous occupation of Zuccotti Park, a private enclave adjacent to New York’s Financial District, and has since mushroomed across the country. Few, if any, major cities have lacked an occupation. Most have camped in public parks or, as in Philadelphia, [...]
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