Word: slump
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...former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board famously described his job as "taking the punch bowl away just when the party is getting good." Current Fed chief Ben Bernanke wishes it were so. With stock markets around the world reeling, and with a deep housing slump in the United States crippling growth in the world's largest economy, Bernanke's Fed is now frantically ladling the punch out - even though almost everyone already has a brutal hangover. The Fed's surprise January 22nd rate cut - it slashed its key interest rate three quarters of a percentage point, and signaled that...
...engine, the U.S. South Korea, for example, now exports more to China than it does to the United States. But developing nations have been anything but safe havens in the recent turmoil, indicating that the decoupling theory will now be tested with a vengeance. "There's no question the slump in the US will have hurt [Asia's] exports," says Shanghai-based economist Andy Xie. Morgan Stanley's Roach believes decoupling is "one of those nice theories you hear at the top of market bubbles." The fact is, Roach argues, "that Asian consumers are too small to make...
...badly Asia will feel the effects of the U.S. slump depends on its depth and duration. A mild, relatively short U.S. downturn might not be entirely a bad thing in the country that's become the world's second growth engine: China. Most economists believe inflation remains China's biggest risk going forward, and a slow down in the export sector - now unavoidable - could actually do the People's Bank of China's work for it: cool the economy a bit without the need for another rise in interest rates. (The PBOC raised rates six times...
Keep that in mind when listening to those presidential candidates talk economics. By the time one of them takes office a year from now, this year's slump will probably be history. It's the other stuff that he or she might actually be able to do something about...
...population - was in an industrial whirl, thanks to its success in mining and steelmaking. Flanders was considered a backwater; it wasn't until 1930 that Flemish students could study in their own language at a Belgian university. Now, with the decline of heavy industry, Wallonia is in a slump while Flanders is one of Europe's richest and most dynamic regions. And many Flemish resent having to subsidize Wallonia's stagnant economy with an annual handout estimated at around $9 billion, or about $3,000 for each Walloon...