...During The Recent Recession Joanne Cartier Mr. Fant ECO 100 March 15, 2013 A recession is defined as a decline in a country’s GDP (gross domestic product) or when the economic growth in negative, two or more consecutive quarters. The state of the economy during the most recent recession was the worst since the Great Depression. In 2008-2009, the economy decreased within five quarters, including four quarters consecutively. Two quarters showed a decrease more than 5% and Q2 in 2008 dropped 8.9%. This was the lowest drop in a recession since the Great Depression. In Q3 2009, the recent recession ended, because of economic stimulus spending. The recent recession was the longest since the Depression, lasting 18 months. The recession officially started in late 2007 to mid-2009. The Economic Security Index determined the impact of the recession by developing a measurement tool based on government economic data. The tool showed that due to the decline in income, increase in medical spending or both, Americans experienced a financial loss of 25 percent or greater. Southern states showed the worst economic losses from 2008-2010. Researchers found various reasons linked to these states hardship such as, poverty rates, the amount college graduates and unemployment rates. During the last recession, the national unemployment rate was at 5.0 percent making it the lowest in 2.5 years. From December 2007- June 2009, employment decline was the greatest of any recession of recent...
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...THE GREAT RECESSION Anthony Pellegrino March, 2014 The Great Recession and Economic Policy Abstract The most recent Great Recession (GR), including the events which led to it, the policies which followed it and the slow recovery after it have been a topic of debate and inquiry since it began in 2008 and ended in 2009. The purpose of this thesis is to portray those events from the perspective of a 21-year-old economics student in 2014. I, that student, will recount the events which are portrayed as the official cause(s) of the GR, accounting for alternative theories. Then I will examine the policy responses by the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the US Federal government and analyze some historical talking points regarding the GR from multiple sources. Following that, I will explain the effects of policy responses, confront the possibility that responses only served to mask the symptoms instead of removing the cause, and try to explain the atypical slow recovery that we’re currently experiencing. I will list the sectors which were affected by the GR chronologically, beginning with the housing market, and include those presently experiencing the effects and those likely to suffer in the future. I will include, where relevant, common misconceptions about the GR. Finally, I will conclude by offering alternative explanations for the GR and alternative potential policy responses. This item will synchronize with my final judgment of whether we’re on the right track or if the worst has yet...
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...Stock Market Crash of 1929, Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board, American Economic Policy with Europe, Drought Conditions but many people believe that it’s the American economic policies that really caused the depression and entirely blame the government for that. Some of the effects are increase in unemployment, collapse of banks and increase in the cost of living. On the other hand the economic recession of 2008 was longest recession since the world war two hence the term great recession. The recession lasted for 18 months from December 2007 to June 2009. Various things have been attributed to have cause the recession among them are irrational excitement in the housing market and low interest rates while some of the effects are increase in unemployment, increase in oil prices, decrease in consumption and investment. Recessions are declared by the national bureau of economics research (NBER) and according to NBER are defined as ‘‘significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months” but according to John Perkins (2008) recession is any period of two or more quarters of negative...
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...States Monetary Policy 7 2.1 Overview of Recent United States Monetary Policy 8 3. Recent (2011) Direction of Monetary Policy 10 4. Market Reaction to Monetary Policy 12 5. Conclusion 15 6. Reference List 16 1.0 Introduction In macroeconomics, monetary policy is an importance tool to Central Bank and is a policy set by the members of Central Bank. It is an economic strategy chosen by government that authorizes Central Bank to regulate and influence the economic activity by controlling the monetary base flow into national economy. The goals of monetary policy are to promote growth of the economy, stability of prices and reduce unemployment rate. Monetary policy can be classified into two categories, namely expansionary monetary policy and contractionary monetary policy. Although, the objective for the two policies is the same, they adopt different approaches in reaching this objective. Expansionary monetary policy is used when a country is facing a recession in the economy business cycle, whereby it increases the money supply in economy system to meet its objectives. In contrast, where there is a peak in the economy business cycle, central bank will use contractionary monetary policy to reduce the money supply in economy system so as to retard the inflation. For example, the United States, one of the top ten richest countries in the world (IMF, 2011, pp.1), had entered into a recession seen the global financial crisis and faced...
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...The Federal Reserve Bank As the United States moves towards a globally interdependent marketplace, the global monetary stakes have become much higher. The United States Congress established the Federal Reserve in the early 1900’s. A country’s debt can now become the world’s debt, and the role of the U.S. federal banking system is now considerably more under pressure and scrutiny than ever before. As we have been seeing with the current liquidity crisis in the U.S., and how it has affected U.K. and Asian markets, strong, comprehensive policy-making is now crucial to sustaining long-term economic viability. The American economy is a complex balance of services, financial, manufacturing, agricultural, and banking industries. For this reason, the U.S. is a global economy, relying upon foreign investments and trade to create and retain wealth. Over the years, America has evolved from farming-based, to industrial, to a services-based economy. As a result, the banking system from its inception has weathered the many growing pains associated with a new government and currency, instituting regulations and a centralized bank to examine the economy, and implementing policies intended to offset factors negatively affecting the general financial health of the country. Despite the growing need for quick, precise actions by the Federal Reserve System, the decision-making regarding the economy is often met with controversy. The recent bail out plan, passed by Congress...
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...The Impact of the Federal Reserve Monetary Policies on Businesses Paul C. Batt Liberty University Introduction Important tools that governments use are monetary policies. These policies help regulate economic activity. Marc Labonte (2012) states that the Federal Reserve defines monetary policy “as actions taken to influence the availability and cost of money and credit.” These actions help control the money flow through the policies in which is parallel to the political and economic preferences. Monetary policy can influence the economy regionally and globally. These actions affect prices, employment, growth, and other areas. Through these changes, monetary policy influences consumers and businesses willingness to spend. Goals of Monetary Policy Monetary policy goals are consistent with the policy of the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve through it’s Board of Governors and Federal Open Market Committee seek certain goals. These goals include stable prices, long-term interest rates, and maximum employment. Stable prices help sustain maximum growth and employment. Stable pricing in the long-term helps control goods, services, and materials from outside influences of inflation. Stable pricing encourages savings and businesses are encouraged to invest more. Stable pricing in the long-run can compromise stability on the short-run. Short-run effects can lessen price pressures, in which this can move to easing in policy. With restrain inflationary...
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...E. Case, John M. Quigley and Robert J. Shiller, 2001). In daily life, the house and stock price represent the major wealth for household, and in my following paper, I will introduce how house and stock price changes will influence the aggregate economic activity. First of all, the theoretical basis for the important macroeconomic implications of house and stock price. The wealth effect can be divided to two categories, one is positive and another is nagetive. If the price of house and stock increase, for example, it exists a positve effect for househld. How this temporary positive effect affect the aggregate supply (work effort) and demand (consumption)? Because Here is the mechanism. Firstly we consider about the work effort. a. In response to the increase of wealth, household can produce more goods or services. And this will reduce household's leisure and increase the work effort relatively. But this effect will be very small relative to its magnitude if the incresement is perceived as temporary. This is an implication of the Permanant Income Hypothesis. b. The intratemporal substitution of work effort. I want to introduce a concept first, this concept is the Marginal Product of Labor (MPL). MPL is the amount of extra output generated by an extra unit of work. (Robert J. Barro, 2001). So we can find that in this case, the MPL will increase as wealth increase. Under this situation, the leisure is relatively more expensive. Because the return to...
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...Escaping the Recession 2007 Is Creating Recession? Han Tran Principles of Macroeconomics Mihaylo College of Business and Economics California State University at Fullerton December 2, 2010 Abstract The Economic Recession 2007 is the second worst recession in American history. It starts out within the housing market. Then, it expands and harms the other business sectors clearly. To illustrate, the U.S GDP failed by around 7%. Americans struggles who laid-off so unemployment rate shoot up to 9.7%. Many retirees lose their money due to the failure of many investment vehicles. The stock market performance declines because companies go bankrupt. Faced the threat of another Great Depression, the government and Federal Reserve Bank immediately interfere to boost up the economy using many fiscal and monetary policies. These efforts definitely help to improve or at least lighten the crisis’s impact on households and businesses. However, economists are concerned by the potential risks of future inflation and debts. 1. Introduction It started out as a failure of the housing market only. However, unexpectedly and quickly expanded, it flooded the whole economy with bankruptcy, unemployment and failure of stock market and other investment vehicles. It is the Recession 2007 whose damages are just less than the Great Depression. The following paper primarily demonstrates the causation of the Recession 2007, the responded policies of the government or the Federal Reserve...
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...The Federal Reserve offers to the general public numerous publications available at the website of the Federal Reserve Board,http://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/. The Federal Reserve Board testimonies, press releases, monetary policy reports, the Beige Book, and a variety of other publications offer a detailed assessment of current economic activity, financial markets, and the monetary policy tools used to promote economic activity and preserve price stability. 1. Describe the Federal Reserve’s assessment of the current economic activity and financial markets. 2. Explain the Federal Reserve’s current view about inflation. 3. Describe the monetary policy tools the Federal Reserve uses to stabilize the economy and maintain price stability. 4. Based on the information you researched from Federal Reserve publications, present and justify your own economic outlook for the next 12 to 18 months. Introduction American economy is composed of financial balance of services, Agricultural, manufacturing and banking industry. In the result U.S one of the biggest global economy which comprises of foreign investments and movement of wealth in trade. From past many years the U.S economy is emerged more as service based and industrial base economy than farming based. This result the banking system to be more complex to deal with the government and currency , instituting the regulations and a centralized bank to regulate and from a policies which could limitize...
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...The Federal Reserve University of Phoenix The Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. The purpose of the Fed is to control the United States economy by implementing policies to regulate interest rates and the money supply. To understand better how the Fed system works, we have to understand the purpose of money and its function, and explained how the central bank manages the monetary system. Summarize the stated direction of recent monetary policy to realize why the fed makes such decisions as well as list at least one policy that the Fed took to confirm that direction, and as a final point explain the impact of monetary policies on economic production and employment. “Money is the set of assets in the economy that people use to buy goods and services from other people” (Mankiw,). Money includes currency, paper bills, coins, and any of those accepted by sellers in exchange of goods or services. Money has three main functions. The first function is as medium of exchange, buyer use money in exchange for goods or services. Second, money as a unit of account, people use it to post prices and record debts. Finally, money as a store of value, people can use money to transfer purchasing power from the present to the future. Money is administered by the government through the Federal Reserve who acts as the central bank of the nation’s monetary system. The central bank is an institution designed to supervise the banking system, and...
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...The Role of Policy in the Great Recession and the Weak Recovery John B. Taylor* February 2014 It’s been nearly five years since the recession of 2007-2009 ended. By all accounts, this very severe recession was followed by an extremely disappointing recovery. Economic growth during the recovery has been far too slow to raise the employment-to-population ratio from the low levels to which it fell during the recession, or to close materially the gap between real GDP and potential GDP, in marked contrast to the rapid recovery from the previous severe recession in the early 1980s or from earlier severe recessions in U.S. history. When you include both the periods of the recession and the slow recovery, economic instability has more than tripled according to a common measure of performance used by macroeconomists: The standard deviation of the percentage gap between real GDP and potential GDP rose from 1½ percent during 1984-2006 to 5½ percent during 2007-2012 (Taylor, 2013). In this paper I consider the role of economic policy in this poor economic performance. I. The Shift in Policy In evaluating the role of policy it is important to consider actions taken before, during, and after the financial panic in the fall of 2008. A careful look at the full decade from 5 years before to 5 years after the panic reveals that there was a significant shift in policy away from what worked reasonably well in the decades before. Broadly speaking, monetary policy, regulatory policy, and fiscal policy...
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...Executive summery: The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) is an index on the Australian Stock Exchange that acts as the market indicator for Australia's share market. Its recent movement suggests a large increase in stock prices of 30% over a short period of time. This has many potential affects on the economy including and increase consumer confidence, the wealth effect increased investment and hence an increase in the level of output. This will have a multiplied affect on the economy by increasing exogenous expenditure and the MPC. This could potentially have an expansionary effect on the economy bringing about full employment and potential inflation. This expansionary gap may prove to be problematic to policy-makers as inflationary pressures rise making it necessary to adopt contractionary macroeconomic policy. However, some may question policy change due to a change in stock prices, as it is such a small segment of the economy. Stock prices refer to the market value of a share or asset. A rise in stock prices will have an indirect affect on the economy through investor and consumer confidence, the wealth effect and the ‘market value Approach’ creating an output gap. This output gap could potentially affect inflation and employment. Although Macroeconomic policy is not used to target asset prices, it may become necessary due to inflationary pressures. Stoke prices are commonly stated by economist to be ‘macroeconomic...
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...Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve: Current Policy and Conditions Marc Labonte Specialist in Macroeconomic Policy February 9, 2015 Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov RL30354 Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve: Current Policy and Conditions Summary The Federal Reserve (the Fed) defines monetary policy as its actions to influence the availability and cost of money and credit. Because the expectations of market participants play an important role in determining prices and economic growth, monetary policy can also be defined to include the directives, policies, statements, and actions of the Fed that influence future perceptions. Traditionally, the Fed has implemented monetary policy primarily through open market operations involving the purchase and sale of U.S. Treasury securities. The Fed traditionally conducts open market operations by setting a target for the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks borrow and lend reserves on an overnight basis. Beginning in September 2007, in a series of 10 moves, the federal funds target was reduced from 5.25% to a range of 0% to 0.25% on December 16, 2008, where it has remained since. With the federal funds target at this zero lower bound, the Fed attempted to provide additional stimulus through unconventional policies. It provided forward guidance on its expectations for future rates, announcing that it “anticipates that, even after employment and inflation are near mandate-consistent levels, economic...
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...controversial topic Since the 1973 OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil embargo, the role of rapid, unanticipated increases in oil prices has been a topic of intense interest, among both economists and the lay public. Considering the magnitude of widespread national recessions during the 1970s, the controversy surrounding research on the macroeconomics of oil price shocks may seem surprising: why would anyone doubt the capacity of oil price shocks to cause the major movements in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which have been observed in so many countries? Possibly most important in fueling the controversy is the small share of GDP that oil and its close substitutes have comprised in most economies: 1.5% to 3% prior to the 1973 episode. Experienced macroeconomists doubted that even a sizeable shock to such a small part of the economy could have the observed effects. Second, the 1973 episode itself was not a clean experiment because a number of other major factors were emerging at the same time. The world economy was just getting off the post-Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime. A number of countries, including the United States, was teetering on the brink of recession at the time of the 1973 shock; in the United States in particular, monetary policy tightened right around the time of the 1973 shock. Separating these effects and deciding the role of oil price shocks in post 1973 movements of GDP, unemployment rates, and other recessionary indicators ...
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...Price Stability Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Thursday, November 3, 2005 From Inflation to Disinflation and Low Inflation By Allan H. Meltzer Volume 2 of A History of the Federal Reserve covers mainly the years of inflation and disinflation, followed by a return to what is now regarded as relatively low inflation. It treats four questions: Why did inflation start? Why did it continue for 15 or more years, from 1965 to about 1982? Why did it end? Why did it not return? In this paper, I give an overview of the material that I consider in much greater detail in my book. As we look back to the 1950s and 1960s from the early 21st century, two of the many changes in the Federal Reserve System affecting inflation deserve comment. First, in the 1950s the goal was price stability, zero reported inflation, not inflation of about two percent. The 1959-60 disinflation brought reported cpi inflation, measured as a 12-month moving average, to less than 1 percent from March through August 1959. This measure again was below 1 percent through most of 1961, and it did not reach 2 percent until early 1966. Properly measured and adjusted for biases in the price index, the true price level probably declined modestly during this period. This period of deflation was also a period of sustained economic growth. It, and several periods of deflation discussed in volume 1 of A History of the Federal Reserve, show no evidence of the liquidity trap that absorbed much recent attention in...
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