Economy and Government

By: Lexi Blakes Thursday, Feb. 24, U.S. President Joe Biden announced additional sanctions on Russian banks in light of the recent escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The crisis has been mounting since tensions developed in 2014, when protesters in Ukraine overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych, who was partisan to Russia’s interests. That same year, Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. In the years following, the Minsk Accords were signed by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, but it did little to protect Ukraine from Putin’s ambitions. Now, in 2022, Putin has ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Citing pro-Western revolutions and NATO eastward expansion, Putin declared that Russia did not feel safe to “develop and exist” because of the “con...

By: Trevor Jones An often overlooked facet of global economics is the functionality of island economies. I began exploring this in the wake of the Tonga volcano eruption in January 2022, when a massive eruption caused rampant flooding in the Pacific island nation. The publicity of this disaster led me to consider how the economies of Pacific islands work, given how they have seemingly little area or natural resources to build their wealth off of. With this article I aim to explore the broad components of island economies and compare them to our economy here in the United States. Primarily, the biggest change on the surface is the ideology behind these countries’ economies. Countries like Tonga or any other island in the Pacific are not focused on industrialization and developmen...

By: Ron Ye When I began working on the first version of this article, it was about a week before the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There were many uncertainties. Would Russia even invade Ukraine? It seemed like a risky move for Putin to make. How willingly would European nations support sanctions on Russia? Germany had shown reluctance in agreeing to the possible sanctions. Wouldn’t China help Russia economically? During the Olympics, Putin and Xi Jinping seemed to have had each other’s backs. Because of recent events, these uncertainties have been mostly answered.  However, the effectiveness of the sanctions that have been placed on Russia remains yet to be seen. Current Situation On February 23, 2022, at around 9:00 p.m. U.S. Central TIme, the Russian Federation...

By: Geneva Bass The advent of the novel coronavirus initially paralyzed the global art market. The first half of 2020 saw fine-art auction sales crumble over 50% and the contemporary art market lose 36%, both scraping record lows.  However, the global art market and the auction scene’s swift market orientation paired with a low-interest-rate environment, inflationary monetary policy, and consolidation of wealth quickly fueled a historic rebound for the largest unregulated financial space in the world, the art market, despite the global economy’s continued Covid-induced distress.  The global art market’s nimble adoption of online auctioning proved critical. 2020 heralded a dramatic ascent in online auctioning’s popularity; insurance group Hiscox and art research firm Art...

By: Ke Tang OverviewInflation in October is rising more than expected. According to the US Bureau of LaborStatistics, the consumer price index in October has increased 0.9% and pushed the year-over-year increase to 6.2%, hitting a 30-year high. In comparison, the consumer price index inSeptember has risen 0.4% on the month and 5.4% on the year. 1 The rise of inflation exceedspeople's expectations and will increase people’s costs for living. However, it is not necessarilythat inflation will influence everyone equally. Depending on an individual’s consumption basket,the impact on one’s cost of living will be different because different products have experiencedvarious levels of inflation. Furthermore, those in the lower-income status will be influenced themost as they are most vulnerable...

By: Marvi Ali The Federal Reserve System, or the Fed, is the central bank and monetary authority of theUnited States. Founded in the aftermaths of the Panic of 1907 and a series of financial crises, theFed was tasked with the major responsibilities of conducting national monetary policy,supervising and regulating the banking system, and ensuring financial stability. There are threemain components of the Fed: the Regional Banks, the Board of Governors, and the Federal OpenMarket Committee. One of the seven governors from the Board of Governors is appointed as theChairman of the Fed by the President of the United States and then confirmed by the US Senate.The Fed Chair serves as a spokesperson and representative for the rest of the Board and chairsboth the Board of Governors and the Fede...

By: Mi Nguyen It has been almost two years since the COVID-19 virus was detected and the world is going deepinto quarantine and isolation to battle the immense spread of the virus. By this point, wearingmasks indoors and showing vaccination cards at restaurants has become the new normal already.As we become so used to living with the virus, we tend to forget that COVID-19 is still there,and it still has a huge impact on our current economy. Examining the report from S&P Global Ratings, we can see that although the economy is slowlyrecovering from the initial impact of COVID-19, the road to full pre-pandemic recovery is stillshaky due to surges of COVID cases in different countries along with new variants beingdiscovered. For instance, in the US, although key emerging markets, li...

By: Neelesh Raj During an online conference hosted by the South African Reserve Bank, FederalReserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated that supply-chain issues would eventually be resolved.He also claimed that the current stagflation caused by the supply chain bottleneck would bescaled back, bringing inflation back to the Fed's current goal of two percent per year. The impactof his statement can be seen on the securities market, causing the price of gold to drop bynearly $30 per ounce, bringing the gold price below $1800 once again. Historically speaking, investors usually would invest in government bonds and bullion(such as gold) when they believe in economic instability within the equities market. This woulddecrease the money invested into equities, leading to a form of stagflatio...

By: Marvi Ali During the onset of the pandemic, employers were furloughing and firing workers rapidly, in an effort to downsize. Unemployment peaked in April 2019 at 14.8%. There was great uncertainty as to whether workers would find any jobs, let alone better jobs. However, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that, in August, 4.3 million Americans had quit their jobs, setting a new record but following the trend of rising quit rates from previous months. Economists have increasingly begun to recognize this new phenomenon as “The Great Resignation,” which is a term coined by Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University, in 2019. He predicted a mass, voluntary exodus from the workforce, and this is exactly what is happening. We are witnessi...