- The new head of the Federal Reserve
Janet Yellen will stick to her predecessor’s expansionary policies
The Economist Oct 12th 2013
FOR most of the past few years, monetary policy has urged the economy on while dysfunctional fiscal policy has held it back. Barack Obama’s decision to nominate Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as the Fed’s chairman in February raises the odds that stimulative monetary policy will continue. But disquiet about that stance is growing.
In addition to being the first woman to run the Fed, Ms Yellen is also the first acknowledged dove. Presidents once felt compelled to appoint monetary-policy hawks such as Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan to reassure markets that the Fed would not succumb to the political system’s inflationary bias. In appointing Ms Yellen Mr Obama has implicitly acknowledged how much the world, and the Fed’s priorities, have changed. Since 2008 America, like many other countries, has struggled with slack demand and high unemployment. Meanwhile, energy prices excluded, inflation has persistently fallen short of the Fed’s 2% target.
Ms Yellen is not alone in believing that unemployment is a bigger problem than inflation. So do most of her colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee, through which the Fed sets interest rates. But she has felt that way longer and more strongly. She pushed publicly last year to hold interest rates near zero for longer than the Fed then planned, to hasten the fall in unemployment, even if that caused inflation to rise briefly above 2%. She was the principal author of the Fed’s current statement of long-term goals and operating principles, which stresses the equal importance of its twin statutory goals of full employment and low inflation.
- What is the Higgs boson and why is it important?
CNN October 8, 2013
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Scientists say they've found new evidence the Higgs boson exists
- The so-called "God particle" is thought to be a building block of the universe
- The theoretical particle is key to understanding how universe works, experts say
(CNN) -- Scientists say they have proven the existence of the Higgs boson -- a never-before-seen subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe.
Since 2012 researchers have made great strides in the hunt for the so-called "God particle" at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory are looking for particles that slip into existence when subatomic particles crash into one another at high energies.
Experts say finding the elusive particle would rank as one of the top scientific achievements of the past 50 years -- a view proved on Tuesday when Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, the two physicists who predicted almost 50 years ago that the particle existed, won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
What is the Higgs boson?
The Standard Model of particle physics lays out the basics of how elementary particles and forces interact in the universe. But the theory crucially fails to explain how particles actually get their mass.
Speaking with CERN's Director-GeWhy is the 'God particle' a big deal?
Particles, or bits of matter, range in size and can be larger or smaller than atoms. Electrons, protons and neutrons, for instance, are the subatomic particles that make up an atom.
Scientists believe that the Higgs boson is the particle that gives all matter its mass.
and electrons are the foundation upon which all matter in the universe is built. They believe the elusive Higgs boson gives the particles mass and fills in one of the key holes in modern physics.
How does the Higgs boson work?
The Higgs boson is part of a theory first proposed by Higgs and others in the 1960s to explain how particles obtain mass.
The theory proposes that a so-called Higgs energy field exists everywhere in the universe. As particles zoom around in this field, they interact with and attract Higgs bosons, which cluster around the particles in varying numbers.
Imagine the universe like a party. Relatively unknown guests at the party can pass quickly through the room unnoticed; more popular guests will attract groups of people (the Higgs bosons) who will then slow their movement through the room.
The speed of particles moving through the Higgs field works much in the same way. Certain particles will attract larger clusters of Higgs bosons -- and the more Higgs bosons a particle attracts, the greater its mass will be.
Higgs boson is the last missing piece of our current understanding of the most fundamental nature of the universe.
Why is finding the Higgs boson so important?
While finding the Higgs boson won't tell us everything we need to know about how the universe works, it will fill in a huge hole in the Standard Model that has existed for more than 50 years, according to experts.
"The Higgs boson is the last missing piece of our current understanding of the most fundamental nature of the universe," Martin Archer, a physicist at Imperial College in London, told CNN.
"Only now with the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] are we able to really tick that box off and say 'This is how the universe works, or at least we think it does'."
"It's not the be all and end all -- but in terms of what can we say practically about the world and how the world is, it actually tells us a lot."
- Xi urges developing connectivity in Asia Pacific
China Daily 2013.10.08
BALI, Indonesia - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for building a framework of connectivity across the Asia Pacific region.
Xi proposed the idea on the second day of the 21st informal economic leaders' meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) held on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
He called on the APEC forum to promote connectivity in the region, detailing his point in four aspects.
Firstly, APEC economies should establish a connectivity network covering the whole Asia Pacific, so as to help bolster the construction of economic corridors in various subregions and foster a vast Asia-Pacific market covering 21 economies and 2.8 billion people, Xi said.
Efforts should be made to secure the free flow of production elements in the region and steadily enhance the coordinated development among Asia-Pacific members in order to achieve regional integration, Xi said.
Secondly, APEC economies should dismantle the bottlenecks barring connectivity, and establish investment and financing partnerships with extensive participation from governments, private sectors, and international institutions, Xi said.
China stands ready to explore and expand investment and financing channels for infrastructure construction and proposes the establishment of an Asia infrastructure investment bank.
Thirdly, APEC members should promote connectivity and infrastructure construction within the frameworks of regional and international cooperation, Xi said.
All members should enhance communication and actively participate in cooperation in the spirit of mutual benefit, complementary advantages, and adhering to the principle of open, transparent, and win-win cooperation.
Fourthly, APEC members should take advantage of connectivity to help people in the Asia-Pacific region establish closer links in economy and trade, finance, education, science and culture, and deepen mutual understanding and trust.
China hopes to take that opportunity to work closely with all relevant parties to push APEC economies to build closer partnership in the spirit of openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit and to make the APEC play a greater leadership role in mapping out the long-term development goals of the Asia-Pacific region, Xi said.
Leaders who attended Tuesday's meeting gave unanimous support for China's bid to hold the APEC meeting next year, believing the event will be a full success.
They issued a joint declaration on "resilient Asia-Pacific, engine of global growth" and a statement of "supporting the multilateral trading system and the 9th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization".
The two documents pledged to enhance policy coordination, strengthen the multilateral trading system, promote regional integration, deepen cooperation in areas such as connectivity, and jointly safeguard and develop an open world economy.
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