Federal Reserve Essays

Federal Reserve Essays Federal Reserve Essay Federal Reserve Essay The U.S. Economy was affected in many ways by the numerous tax rate cuts; the affects include the stock market, manufacturing, retail sales, unemployment, U.S. consumer confidence, and rumors of wars.The Feds goal is to make money more available to consumers, who drive two-thirds of Americas economy, and keep them spending.Most economists think the terrorist attacks of September 11, pushed the U.S. Economy, already weak after a year-long slowdown in spending by businesses, into a recession.The terrorist attacks have significantly heightened uncertainty in an economy that was already weak, the Fed statement said.Business and household spending as a consequence are being further damped.Recent data hinted that the beleaguered manufacturing sector, which has borne the brunt of a year-long slowdown in the general economy, was beginning to recover before the attacks.But there have also been signs that consumer confidence was beginning to wane before the attacks, an d it has certainly done so in the days since. (Cnnmoney,10/02/01)One may question if the Feds policy moves are effective any more.After all, it would seem that nine rate cuts in a year would at least have had an impact on stock prices, which usually resond positively to lower rates.Instead, major stock indexes, even before Sept. 11, were below the levels they held before the Fed started cutting rates.The stock market discovered that many of the numbers it had been using to try to make a case for buying expensive stocks ranged from aggressively promotional to outright lies and one of the Big Five accounting firms was convicted of fraud. (Macleans, 9/16/02)The travel industry was in crisis, and some airlines would go bankrupt.On a fiscal side, President Bush and Congress had approved a $40-billion emergency relief package and a $15-billion bailout of the airline industry in the day.

Loanwords From French, German, Latin, and Spanish

Loanwords From French, German, Latin, and Spanish On the eve of the First World War, an editorial in the Berlin Deutsche Tageszeitung argued that the German language, coming direct from the hand of God, should be imposed on men of all colors and nationalities. The alternative, the newspaper said, was unthinkable: Should the English language be victorious and become the world language the culture of mankind will stand before a closed door and the death knell will sound for civilization. . . .English, the bastard tongue of the canting island pirates, must be swept from the place it has usurped and forced back into the remotest corners of Britain until it has returned to its original elements of an insignificant pirate dialect.(quoted by James William White in A Primer of the War for Americans. John C. Winston Company, 1914) This sabre-rattling reference to English as the bastard tongue was hardly original. Three centuries earlier, the headmaster of St. Pauls School in London, Alexander Gil, wrote that since the time of Chaucer the English language had been defiled and corrupted by the importation of Latin and French words: [T]oday we are, for the most part, Englishmen not speaking English and not understood by English ears. Nor are we satisfied with having begotten this illegitimate progeny, nourished this monster, but we have exiled that which was legitimateour birthrightpleasant in expression, and acknowledged by our forefathers. O cruel country!(from Logonomia Anglica, 1619, quoted by Seth Lerer in Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language. Columbia University Press, 2007) Not everyone agreed. Thomas De Quincey, for example, regarded such efforts to malign the English language as the blindest of human follies: The peculiar, and without exaggeration we may say the providential, felicity of the English language has been made its capital reproachthat, whilst yet ductile and capable of new impressions, it received a fresh and large infusion of alien wealth. It is, say the imbecile, a bastard language, a hybrid language, and so forth. . . . It is time to have done with these follies. Let us open our eyes to our own advantages.(The English Language, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, April 1839) In our own time, as suggested by the title of John McWhorters recently published linguistic history*, were more likely to boast about our magnificent bastard tongue. English has unashamedly borrowed words from more than 300 other languages, and (to shift metaphors) theres no sign that it plans to close its lexical borders any time soon. French Loan Words Over the years, the English language has borrowed a great number of French words and expressions. Some of this vocabulary has been so completely absorbed by English that speakers might not realize its origins. Other words and expressions have retained their Frenchnessa certain je ne sais quoi which speakers tend to be much more aware of (although this awareness does not usually extend to actually pronouncing the word in French).   German Loan Words in English English has borrowed many words from German. Some of those words have become a natural part of everyday English vocabulary (angst, kindergarten, sauerkraut), while others are primarily intellectual, literary, scientific (Waldsterben, Weltanschauung, Zeitgeist), or used in special areas, such as gestalt in psychology, or aufeis and loess in geology. Some of these German words are used in English because there is no true English equivalent: gemà ¼tlich, schadenfreude. Latin Words and Expressions in English Just because our English language doesnt come from Latin doesnt mean all our words have a Germanic origin. Clearly, some words and expressions are Latin, like ad hoc. Others, e.g., habitat, circulate so freely that were not aware theyre Latin. Some came into English when Francophone Normans invaded Britain in 1066. Others, borrowed from Latin, have been modified. Spanish Words Become Our Own Many Spanish loanwords have entered the English vocabulary. As noted, some of them were adopted into the Spanish language from elsewhere before they were passed on to English. Although most of them retain the spelling and even (more or less) the pronunciation of Spanish, they are all recognized as English words by at least one reference source.