For most experts, deflation, which they define as a general decline in prices of goods and services, is bad news since it generates expectations for a further decline in prices.

As a result, they hold, consumers postpone their buying of goods at present since they expect to buy these goods at lower prices in the future. This weakens the overall flow of spending and in turn weakens the economy.

Hence, such commentators hold that policies that counter deflation will also counter the slump.

As a Luxembourgish citizen who for the first eighteen years of his life has seen one prime minister and one prime minister only, I can tell you that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s tough talk isn’t worth the least bit what the media makes it seem.

The Bank of England today announced it will cut interest rates to .25%, a new historic low. This is the first interest rate cut since the BoE set rates to .5% in 2009, and a continuation of the global trend to push rates closer to 0% (and below.) The BoE also announced a new quantitative easing program that will buy £10 billion corporate bonds and expand its holdings of government debt by £60.

Professional golfer Phil Mickelson was back in the news this summer thanks to a 2014 federal investigation into an insider trading case. It is alleged that Mickelson owed high stakes sports gambler Billy Walters a considerable amount of money in July of 2012.

Americans have long regarded owning a home to be largely synonymous with the so-called “American dream” although high homeowernship rates are not necessarily synonymous with a high-income prosperous society. Switzerland and Germany, for example, have homeownership rates well below that usually found in the US. 

[From the Introduction.]

Every policy discussion, in the media or the political arena, touches inevitably on the sensitive issue of economic growth. Over the past year, these discussions have revolved primarily around the sluggish growth experienced by European economies, Japan, the U.S., and even China. A recent VOX article tries to identify some of the possible reasons for this slow growth, i.e. present eight existing theories for what it calls “the big puzzle in economics today”.