Inflation means a sustained increase in the cost of living. It means the value of money will decrease. If you owe someone £1,000, inflation will make this relatively easier to pay off. Assume that if prices go up by 10% a year wages also increase by 10% a year. This means each year you …
There are various economic costs associated with inflation – uncertainty, decline in investment, redistribution from savers to borrowers – but although there are costs with inflation, is zero inflation actually desirable? Governments usually set an inflation target of around 2%. (UK CPI target is 2% +/-1) There are reasons for targetting inflation of 2% – …
Readers Question: Will interest rates rise? Some say yes, my investment analyst/advisor says no (“because the UK is largely living on credit and the government and bank of England do not want a repeat of 2008”) Interest rates will rise when the Bank of England feel the economy has returned to a normal trend of …
Readers Question: Discuss whether a widespread shortage of labour might be a major cause of inflation. Often a shortage of labour causes inflationary pressure. If firms are struggling to employ sufficient labour, workers are in a position to demand higher wages. This can easily lead to wage inflation which causes inflation. Micro-theory of labour shortages …
Barack Obama served as President from Jan 2009 – Jan 2017. When Obama came to office in Jan 2009, the US economy was in a deep recession, with falling real GDP, high unemployment and rising levels of government borrowing. As President, Obama oversaw a moderate fiscal expansion which helped to promote economic recovery and falling …
Summary – If a country has a higher inflation rate than its competitors, then its good will be increasing in price at a faster rate and therefore, they will become relatively less competitive. It will experience less demand for its exports and therefore less demand for its currency. This will tend to cause a depreciation …
Deflation means a fall in prices (a negative inflation rate). Though policymakers should generally be concerned if there is an inflation rate less than the target of 2%. For example, in the Eurozone Jan 2015, the headline inflation rate is -0.2%. Even if we strip away volatile prices like oil, core inflation is 0.8%. …
Interest rates are the cost of borrowing money. Interest rates are normally expressed as a % of the total borrowed, e.g. for a 30-year mortgage, a bank may charge 5% interest per year. Interest rates also show the return received on saving money in the bank or from an asset like a government bond. Different …