BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

The whole week hiking price of oil, nobody can stand still. We need to find out who is indeed stimulate it.

A week after failing to deflate record oil prices at a summit in Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude producers and consumers will get another chance to tackle the problem at a new meeting this week.

More than 3 000 delegates, including leading corporate and political figures, are to meet at the 19th World Petroleum Congress (WPC) in Madrid, which runs from tomorrow to Thursday after an official opening reception yesterday.

“It’s the Olympics of the oil and gas industry,” said Pierce Riemer, the director of the WPC. Read the rest of this entry »

The endogenous determination of the interest rate

In a boom, banks will lend more and will seek to create new deposits or issue additional notes. To support these activities, they will have to attract additional reserves. This will lead them to bid up interest rates, as they seek to attract idle reserves from one another and from hoards. In a slump, they will issue less and lend less, and will seek to shed reserves, lowering interest rates. In other words, while long-term average rates are determined by costs and competition, current interest rates reflect the balance of supply and demand in the market. They move pro-cyclically.

This is illustrated by a simple model. On the one hand, the rate of interest (in relation to the rate of profit), is likely to affect investment inversely, and investment, in turn, will have an impact on prices and employment. Changes in prices and employment will call for changes in reserves. Read the rest of this entry »