News Story of the Day: the European Central Bank (ECB) announced Thursday that it will leave key interest rates unchanged.
According to the central bank, this is what interest rates will look like: ECB keeps main refinancing rate unchanged at 0.00 percent; leaves deposit facility rate unchanged at -0.40 percent; keeps marginal lending rate unchanged at 0.25 percent.
“If warranted to achieve its objective, the Governing Council will act by using all instruments available within its mandate,” the ECB president told reporters in Frankfurt on Thursday. “I would stress readiness, willingness, ability, to do so.”
ECB President Mario Draghi promised that the central bank will do whatever is necessary to increase inflation and spur economic growth. However, he did say that he will be delaying any helicopter money for the time being, which is in line with the Bank of England (BOE) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ). Its own quantitative easing (QE) measures will continue.
Chart of the Day: The Big Mac index has been an interesting but fun way to look at currencies and their respective purchasing-power parity (PPP). It was created by The Economist in 1986 to determine if currencies are at their supposed “correct” level. Here is the latest update of The Big Mac Index:
Illustration of the Day: the bickering between the right and left has been very entertaining this election cycle. The intolerant left is shouting off insults to those they disagree with, while the right is abandoning the supposed anti-government mantra in favor of Donald Trump. Well, the latest round of attacks came when Laura Ingraham ended her speech at the RNC on Wednesday with an alleged Nazi salute, which is a ridiculous accusation. Nevertheless, the left went nuts on Twitter (as usual), but if you want to use the same logic then shouldn’t these same people whine and moan about the Nazi salutes from Hillary Clinton?
So liberals are complaining that Laura Ingraham saluted like this? pic.twitter.com/ahEmaRxJhd
— Jennifer #Trump2016 (@jenilynn1001) July 21, 2016
Quote of the Day: legendary free market economist Milton Friedman wouldn’t be a big fan of Donald Trump’s trade policy. His idea to impose tariffs, to think that the trade deficit means anything and to believe he can install his idea of “fair trade” would have Friedman laughing. Here is what he wrote in 1962:
What we ought to do is practice what we preach. We have been going around preaching the virtues of free enterprise, of free competition in a free market. What have we been doing? We’ve been practicing the opposite, not only through our foreign aid program, but also at home. We tell other countries, use the market: we tell our farmers, look to Washington. We tell other countries, don’t try to be self-sustained; try to develop valuable industries that can compete on the international market, and then what do we do? We impose import quotas on oil, we impose tariffs on goods that come in, we dump agricultural products abroad, and impose quota on their import at home. The rest of the world listens to what we say and they think, “now there is a fine bunch of hypocrites,” and they are right.
Video of the Day: the government is watching you, and it won’t end if either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is elected.
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