Canada Does the Global Economy a Favor

Canada is trying to become a model citizen to the rest of the world, but is only helping itself establish a sufficient running economy as it pursues a mix of monetary and fiscal policies. Prime Minister Trudeau intruduced a budget that will boost spending on initiatives from infrastructure and social benefits. From that stimulus the Central bank of Canada has refrained from cutting interest rates, which will strengthen the Canadian dollar. "The higher dollar will be a drag on Canada’s trade sector, diluting the budget’s stimulative impact. But Canada’s loss is the world’s gain. In fact, Canada is faithfully executing the formula that finance ministers and central bankers from the top 20 economies agreed to pursue at their just-concluded meetings in Washington: namely, rely less on monetary and more on fiscal policy to rejuvenate growth." 

"This is a situation where countries will end up worse off by pursuing their own interest than by cooperating. Central banks in the eurozone and Japan have cut interest rates into negative territory, for instance, in what others claim is an attempt to cheapen their currencies to bolster exports and inflation." Theorist hypothesis that  is an zero-sum game in “secular stagnation,” when interest rates are near zero and central banks can no longer restore full employment. Increased borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates and the currency, drawing in imports. Therefore by pushing interest rates higher, it restores some of the potency that monetary policy loses when rates hit zero.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-does-the-global-economy-a-favor-1461169055

Oil Wavers After Output Deal Fails

Oil has been a tough debate whether to increased the price or negotiate with other countries. In this situation Saudi Arabia refuses to deal since Iran has been committed to obey the international laws and negotiate their nuclear program. In other words, the conflict that its happening now affects the price of the petroleum and many countries in the Middle East gets affected by this conflict.
U.S oil price has been increasing more than 50 percent and the problem is that if there are no negotiations then the process would stop and the price would increase. Saudi Arabia and Russia did agree to freeze their production while the global output continues to exceed demand and would lead to an output cut near the future. The meeting fail on Sunday in Qatar at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries because the prices were dropping to quick on other countries.
To most economic analysts this means that the failure negotiations will only be limited until a further negotiations will be approved. Kuwait Oil Company released their average in which they said that there is an output of 1.1 million barrels per day which is not good to Kuwait because this could cause a crisis on exporting since the demand will increase. It looks like the future will depend on Saudi Arabia and Iran pledging together since most of the countries like China, Mexico, Russia and the U.S will continue to decline their prices. Gasoline future recently fell to 0.3 percent to $1.4576 a gallon and the Diesel fuel has increased 1.5 percent to $1.2509 a gallon.http://www.wsj.com/articles/oil-prices-fall-5-in-late-asia-trading-1460964703

Castro Offers Tough Appraisal of Cuba's Slow Progress on Economic Reforms

I am puertorrican and Cuba is Puerto Rico's dear sister so I naturally leaned into writing about this article because, I will be taking a cruise to Cuba and so naturally I was sort of interested in what Raul Castro had to say and see if he was having a bipolar moment and go all Fidel Castro on all of us.

He didn't, he is just being cautious. Raul castro held a communist party congress and he warned the country of Cuba that they must remain aware of the U.S. He also opened up about implementing critical economic reforms.

He opened up his speech defending and reviewing Cuba's slow process of economic reform.Despite Cuba's adverse conditions, Cuba's economy grew 2.8% last year which was helped by the tourism sector that brought in 3.5 million visitors to the island. Cuba's economy has been particularly hurt by the economic meltdown of Venezuela, which provides oil at cut-rate prices in exchange for the services of Cuban doctors and other professionals.

Mr.Castro said the greatest obstacle to economic reform continues to be the failure to integrate Cubas dual-currency system. Cuba uses a domestic currency where a dollar buys 24 pesos, as well as a convertible peso, known as the CUC, which trades 87 U.S. cents.

I think like Puerto Rico ( which right now is doing poorly economically), Cubas economy will boost up with this cruise line and all the news surrounding Cuba which will bring in even more tourists. Since Cuba is a communist island not a lot of people want to go to  because of fears ingrained in peoples minds of communism. But if they can market into peoples brains to look past that, which they have, after Obama visiting the Island and coming their alive and happy. Cuba is such a Virgin island with not a lot of buildings and constructions ruining the land.They have virgin beaches with white sands and clear blue waters! I think that they should really promote the positive aspects of the beautiful island and I see the economy increasing in its future.

Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei Takes Aim at Donald Trump's Trade Policies

Chinese Fiance Minster Lou Jiwei called Donald Trump an "irrational type" and said U.S., "wouldn't be entitles to world leadership" if it followed Mr.Trump's proposed trade policies toward China.

Mr.Trump has advocates imposing 45% tariffs on Chinas as a way to force it to change its trade policies. Mr.Lou said that under those conditions, the U.S. wouldn't be entitles to its position as the world's major power. But what Trump doesn't know or maybe he does know but he thinks the people who are listening are illiterate and naive, that almost any increase across-the-board would violate U.S. obligations under the WTO.

In a statement from his campaign, Trump said that China was "in total violation of WTO regulations" and that the U.S. "has incompetently allowed them to get away with this" and has failed to impose "equal or greater taxes and tariffs" on China. If he is elected president, Trump said, China "will learn to deal fairly and justly or we will not deal at all" with Beijing.

Mr.Lou was asked about his opinion on what Trump had to say and he answered very professionally, he said that Americans needed to recognize the U.S. and China "are mutually dependent on each other" and both have a lot to lose in any economic confrontation. "Our economic cycles are intertwined'" he said. "We have more in common than sets us apart."

But as he answered all those question he couldn't really answer solutions to Chinas economic problem. Many argue that Chinas stimulus program has gone on for too long and has produced an avalanche of lending by state banks, which inflated bubble in China's real-estate market and led to vast overcapacity in its industrial sector. Now the real-estate bubble has burst and the lending has saddled China with poorly performing companies that are having a tough time paying down their debts. Largely as a result, China's economy has slowed to below 7% annual growth in GDP, about half the 14.4% GDP growth it recorded in 2007.

Brain Implant Helps Restore Movement for Paralyzed Patient, Researchers Say

There is a new tiny device that can be implanted in the motor cortex that allows man with quadriplegia to make intricate movements. Isn't this amazing? Scientists are breaking ground immensely in a decades long effort to restore movement to people with spinal-cord injuries.

A quadriplegic patient called Ian Burkhart,24, wasn't always quadriplegic he became quadriplegic five years ago after a diving accident. After the accident messages from his brain to his limbs couldn't get to other parts of his body due to damage in his spinal cord.

How does this thing work you may ask? Researchers from Ohio State University implanted a tiny device in Burkhart's motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement. The device acts as  a neural bypass, picking up the brain signals and sending them to a computer that decodes them. He imagines the movement, the brain signal is transmitted and decoded and the electrical stimulation is delivered to the muscles using a sleeve embedded with electrodes that wraps around his arm. He was able to grasp a bottle, and picking up a stick while stirring the contents in a jar.

Spinal- cord injuries affect approximately 150,000 people in the U.S. and not all of them are elegible to use such a device. While they discovered all this and so many people need help they actually lack funds to keep going with this research. It has actually been a challenge for the university to find successful business models to commercialize brain-computer technology, even when experiments demonstrate the difference restoring function can make in peoples lives.

I think that that is preposterous since the results show that the experiment does work. But I guess business man want results now and it will be a long time for such treatments to be available and affordable for everyone to use.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/brain-implant-helps-restore-movement-for-paralyzed-patient-researchers-say-1460566801

Sanders, Clinton Spar Over Minimum Wage Increases

With the Presidential campaign being underway, the contest over minimum wages with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders continues. While they both want higher minimum wages for American workers, they have different dollar amounts for what number they want it to be, with Hillary at 12 and Bernie at 15. With how high each of these candidates want to make the minimum wage, this could be an issue for the American economy as this increase in wages will make jobs have to require more from their workers, leading into unemployment for more U.S. citizens. I am not sure that this is the correct way to go in the long run as Hillary seems to be doing t his just to gain approval from voters and to match up against Sanders. This is seen as she says she will increase minimum wages if New York's bill passes from the Congress, with Bernie Sander's ad questioning her actions about this as well. While more money for the working population is good, it isn't beneficial if this causes a large amount of the populace to be unable to benefit from it if they can't work due to work requirements increasing with the wages. Hopefully in this presidential campaign Hillary and Sander's stances on the minimum wage will differentiate in time as having both candidates trying to one up each other for the same thing will just make it end up hurting the working class rather than helping them.

Article Link: 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sanders-clinton-spar-over-minimum-wage-increases-1460910281

Supplier of Laser Sensors for Driverless Cars Expects to Double Sales

          The testing and manufacturing of autonomous vehicles has become very popular among car makers recently. An autonomous vehicle is a vehicle equipt with self driving technology allowing its passengers to sit back and relax while it does all of the work. To get an idea of how quickly the idea is becoming popular look at laser range finder producing company Velodyne Acoustics Inc. Velodyne is the worlds biggest supplier of laser sensors used in autonomous vehicles. The company announced that it is expecting to double in sales from 2000 units in 2015 to 4000 come 2016. Velodyne also said that it is working with 17 automakers to deliver a more marketable inexpesive version of its original 64 beam spinning laser which is deemed too large and expensive to be used commonly in mass production.

          This correlates with our marketing class because this is a new product to the market place. By creating a new product which is very versatile consumers and competitors alike will engage it into the marketing mix. Sub products such as this which are a part of something much bigger such as autonomus driving in the future are what keep our markets going.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/biggest-supplier-of-laser-sensors-for-driverless-cars-expects-to-double-sales-1460742568?mod=WSJWin10&cb=logged0.01598587410912744#livefyre-comment