Apr
21
UK Gov’t To Buy Mortgages
Filed Under News, UK Government, Economics | 1 Comment
From the CNBC article: “The Bank of England is offering to exchange government securities for a range of high quality bank assets, including mortgages.” They further write: It is being guaranteed by the British Treasury but has been designed to avoid the public sector taking on the risk of potential losses.” Also see this article from the BBC.
Can someone explain to me the logic of how using using tax money will “avoid the public sector taking on the risk of potential losses”?
Apr
13
Food Prices Continue To Rise; IMF Warns Of Starvation
Filed Under News, Opinion, World News, Economics | Leave a Comment
Updated 20080414: The World Bank has echoed these sentiments.
With global food prices continuing to rise, the International Monetary Fund has warned that hundreds of thousands of people may face starvation. As detailed in a previous post, rice prices have gone up 70% in the last year. There have already been food riots in Haiti, the Philippines, and Egypt. Quoting: “He said the problem could lead to trade imbalances that may eventually affect developed nations, ’so it is not only a humanitarian question’.”
Well, as long as it’s “not only a humanitarian question” then I guess the rich nations will actually do something about it? Isn’t it the height of arrogance and vanity that he has to make an appeal to rich nations’ self-interest to get them to consider doing something about it? There is one poignant sentence in the article that sums things up quite nicely:
Apr
4
In what could very well be a further sign of worldwide inflation, Asian countries are paying more for rice across the board. It’s interesting that governments no longer include food and energy statistics in their calculations of inflation, because if they did, inflation would rear its ugly head, and there’d be no question that there’s a recession.