Quantitative Easing

This week you have an economist from the other side of the pond to read about. Ben Bernanke who is the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve is talking about avoiding a further plunge into recession and it would seem that his views are not the same as those of the European politicians.He is much more in favour of quantitative easing
Read the Guardian article and then you have more quiz questions to answer. Good Luck and have fun with economics.
finance
education

Pensions

The word for this weekend is pension, I have been meaning to write about this for weeks but an article in today’s Guardian really caught my eye and I thought I would bring it to your attention.
The UK government is planning to increase the age when people in the UK can get their state pension. As you can imagine this has caused a lot of interest especially as the previous government had also increased this age quite substantially in the recent past.
Now the new coalition government is planning to speed up this process for both men and women in the UK following the recent changes in Greece and other European countries.
Please read the article and answer the following questions. Discuss the questions with your classmates and your teacher.

1. What is the State retirement age in your country?
2. Why does the article say the retirement age is being increased?
3. Do companies have workplace pensions in your country?
4. Research the terms consumer price index and retail price index on the internet and write a short note to explain the difference to yourself for future reference.
5. What age do you expect to retire? Do you want to retire later than the normal age or earlier?
6. Your boss has asked you to continue working after the state retirement age. Write him a formal letter explaining why you have decided to stay at work or leave at the normal age. Write 120-140 words do not include addresses.

Credit Reference agencies

Credit rating agencies
Credit rating agencies, issue ratings for the debt of public and private corporations; this means that they are expected to know if a company or a financial product is a good risk for the investor. They should use this information in their ratings.
Writing in the Guardian this week Elena Moya discusses EU plans to create a watchdog to curb these agencies as they have been widely criticized following the recent credit crisis.
Read the article and answer the following questions in your note book.

1. Which credit rating agencies are named? Have you heard of them before?
2. Write an email to a colleague explaining your opinion of the article.
Start as follows – Hello Jonathan, Did you see the article in the Guardian…
Get your teacher to check your email.
3. Why is the EU scrutinizing Standard and Poor’s?
4. What is Mensa ? What do they mean by Mensa like?
5. Find a present continuous and a simple past usage of a verb that also means putting a ship into the water.
6. How will a watchdog protect the economy from a future credit crunch? Make notes in your notebook.

Word of the week

Welcome to the blog Financial word of the week,

Here we are going to look at some of the new language of Financial English which those of you who are involved in finance or accounting must understand and use every day.

The symbol at the top of the page represents the economic cycle. This is my word of the week for the week ending 23rd May 2010.
Exercises:
Read the text from the link above and make notes in your note book.
When could you use this expression?
Where is your country in the Economic cycle?
How does the Economic Cycle affect your company?
Prepare a short elevator speech on this topic and post it as a comment to this article.
Have a good week, until next week.