week 8

    Credit card has been an important part of our lives. Even young children know that there's a kind of card that mommy or daddy will use to pay for their toy, and the only thing they need to do is to sign their names on the sheet. There are many advantages of credit card. You buy things with credit card without the need of bringing lots of paper bill. Sometimes you can even get account if you use certain credit cards. One of the biggest idea about credit card is that people are allow to buy first and pay later. However, it can lead to bad concept. Holders are encouraged to spend more. Nowadays, the news of people getting into credit card debt can be seen everywhere. It's certain that credit card is a useful and irreplaceable tool. Yet, it tests your control of your own expenditure.

week 9

    My father and I talked about the recession in 2008. At the very beginning, banks offered people or company to lend money in a very low interest rates. The banks eventually bust up because they found out the properties' actual value is much lower than what they had paid for. The land price fell. Not only did the banks disintegrated but also the mortgage-backed securities. Also, people stopped buying houses, and the economy finally collapsed. The same thing happened in Japan, too. Stocks and speculation in land led to bubble economy. In addition, Inflated land price and low interest rates result in excessive loan. In order to bring the economy back to normal again, the government adjusted the interest rate into a much more higher one. However, the situation didn't get better and consequently came to debt crisis.

week 7

    I saw two news on the television that kind of related to my last post of creativity and innovation. It's about new invention that can make good profit on marketing. The first one is prove that time is money. Nowadays people set alarm to wake them up. However, most of the time they still stuck in the bed and continue sleeping. As a result, the inventor invented a kind of alarm that will tear off your paper bill if you don't get up and turn off the alarm. (you need to put the paper bill on a specific space of the alarm the time you set your alarm.) The inventor's idea is that people will choose to save their money instead of keep lying on the bed. Though I wonder that maybe some people will still go back to bed after they turn off the alarm...? Another invention is plastic ice ball. In the summer, people like to get cold drinks with ice cube. Yet, ice  cube will melt after a period of time, which can affect the flavor of the drink. Therefore, the inventor create small plastic balls that contain water in them. You can put the plastic balls in the refrigerator to freeze the water. By putting plastic balls in your drink, we can keep the drink from getting warm, and don't need to worry about the flavor being affected, because even the frozen water melt, it will still stay in the plastic ball. I found out many inventions are invented to improve our lives. The problem of cold drink with ice cube has long existed in my life, but never had I thought to solve this problem. With a small invention, it can provide such a good market.

week 6

There was a type of shop that came out several years before called micro-malls. It first came out in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a small place, and land price is very high. Merchants seek for a space to display their products. Therefore, the idea of micro-malls came out . The inventor's idea was that he noticed many people want to sell their products, but they couldn't afford the high rent of a shop. As a result, he rent a shop with display rack, and provided consignment sale channel which means one can rent a small display box to display his or her products with lower cost than a normal shop. I think this is an interesting idea. Marketing always require creativity and innovation.

week 5

    The article explains some jargon that i'm not very familiar with. I believe that it will be useful in the future. It mostly focuses on inflation and deflation. Inflation refers to the rise in price of the products over time. Expert usually agree with a slightly inflation. It is healthy for a stable economy. There are some terms extend from inflation. For instance, hyperinflation, an inflation that is too high and can be as serious as out of control. Zimbabwe can be a good example. Stagflation is a combination of inflation and stagnation. The economy growth goes down while the price of products still increase. Deflation is when the price goes down for a long period of time. I once thought the falling price is better for people since people can buy what they want with less amount of money. However, that's not true. The article points out that deflation cause fear since it leads to increased unemployment and decreased consumer spending. This will end up in a bad cycle. People expect the price to go lower. As a result, they will wait for the price to go down before buying. This kind of phenomenon leads to more deflation and eventually result in depression.

week 4

    I'm going to talk about global food crisis. I think it's part of economy as well. Soaring food price has been a serious problem in some  countries. The statistics has shown that in just one year, the price of corn has gone up 31 percent on global markets: rice, 74 percent; soya, 87 percent; wheat, 130 percent. Countries in Asia and Africa has been suffering from the food crisis. Multiple reasons such as fertilizer costs, bad weather, and increased demand lead to this problem. The rising demand of oil promotes the production of converting food crops into fuel. The relationship between food crops and fuel means we have both energy problem and food problem at the same time. Food is the basic need for living. As a result, this is a serious problem. However, we haven't find a good way of solving this.

week 3

    One of things that most people are aware of is the inflation of Japan. Since Japan is geographically located near Taiwan, the foreign trade between the two countries is common and important to the economy. I want to talk about the effects of the inflation of Japan on Taiwanese people. The depreciation of the currency attract more people to invest in real estate, stock, potential goods such as medicine, or even education. The data has shown that the currency of Japan depreciate for almost 20%. People are interested in the investment of real estate, not to mention stock exchange and Japanese goods. The statistics states that the volume of trade for real estate is more than one thousand million NT. Except the above, investment in education is what catches my attention the most. As a student who is going to study abroad in the future, I found it interesting that the country people choose for education can even be affected by the economic condition. There are actually some really nice college in the Japan. If the currency of Japan doesn't rise to high. Japan can be one of the consideration of my college, since it's close to Taiwan, and I have relatives there. A little bit off topic; however, what I want to say is that I see how economy affects our life even me as a student.

week 2

    I read a article about economic data. The subtitle stated that Warren Buffett doesn't rely on economic forecasts to make investment decisions - neither should you. It's shocking for me. Most of the time, people think the economic would affect the profit of their investment. They thought that the companies operate with the prosperity and the recession of the economy. If the economic is robust, the companies will earn more money, which means it will have higher share price. This ideas have been deep rooted in my mind and that's what my dad thought, too. However, this article totally overturn what we seen as common sense: people forecast thing based on what's happening currently. The author said that markets move so quickly that it's impossible to invest or forecast successfully. Instead of predicting whether the company can get profit or not in the future, choosing a company that is capable enough to deal with any kind of economic conditions can ensure your investment to be able to survive all the time.

week 1

    Though we can write anything we want on our blog, it will still be weird if I mention about personal stuff especially when I saw my classmates talked about economy on their blogs. I don’t read newspaper or magazine, taking this course will be a good way to force myself to read some. I searched for some online material for economy. There is an interesting article about who cares about economy. So a journalist asked his CNN’s readers to pick five social-justice topics and the result is different from what he expected, the rich-poor gap. Many statistics has shown that the gap between rich and poor is bigger. For example, 400 of the richest people in the United States control as much wealth as the bottom 50% of Americans. Seems like it’s inevitable to have this problem under capitalist economy. However, the government has the responsibility to prevent the gap from rising. Communism might be able to solve this problem that everyone can have the basic standard of living but then other problems will follow. In Taiwan, I think the government should levy more taxes on the rich and reduce the amount of unemployed people. Also, pay more attention on the social welfare. By doing this the problem won’t be root out but at least to prevent it from getting worse.