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A run on the bank begins when the public begins to suspect that a bank may become insolvent. As a result, individuals begin to withdraw their savings. This action can destabilize the bank to the point where it may in fact become insolvent. Banks retain only a fraction of their deposits as cash (see fractional-reserve banking): the remainder is issued as loans. As a result, no bank has enough reserves on hand to cope with more than the fraction of deposits being taken out at once, and will 'call in' the short term deposits itself has made. This can cause a shortage of Market liquidity in the short term money market.

As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum. As more people withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of default increases, so other individuals have more incentive to withdraw their own deposits. If many or most banks were to suffer runs at the same time, then the resulting chain of bankruptcies can cause a long economic recession.

To prevent bank runs, Central banks can prevent financial institutions from failing by:

• Deposit insurance systems insure each depositor up to a certain amount, therefore the depositors' savings are protected even if the bank fails. This removes the incentive to withdraw deposits simply because others are withdrawing theirs if consumers trust the insurance system.
• Central banks act as a lender of last resort. To prevent a bank run, the Central Bank guarantees that it will make short-term, high-interest loans to banks, to ensure that, if they remain economically viable, they will always have enough liquidity to honour their deposits.
• Reserve ratios and Tier 1 capital thresholds both limit the proportion of deposits which a bank can loan out.

Belize City

The economy of Belize is a small, essentially private enterprise economy that is based primarily on agriculture, tourism, and services. The cultivation of newly discovered oil in the town of Spanish Lookout has presented new prospects and problems for this developing nation. Belize's primary exports are citrus, sugar, and bananas. Belize's trade deficit has been growing, mostly as a result of low export prices for sugar and bananas.

The new government faces important challenges to economic stability. Rapid action to improve tax collection has been promised, but a lack of progress in reining in spending could bring the exchange rate under pressure. The Belize dollar is fixed to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 2:1. (Full article...)

"The public services to which the yeomanry were bound were not less arbitrary than the private ones. To make and maintain the high roads, a servitude which still subsists, I believe, every-where, though with different degrees of oppression in different countries, was not the only one. When the king's troops, when his household or his officers of any kind passed through any part of the country, the yeomanry were bound to provide them with horses, carriages, and provisions, at a price regulated by the purveyor. Great Britain is, I believe, the only monarchy in Europe where the oppression of purveyance has been entirely abolished. It still subsists in France and Germany.

The public taxes to which they were subject were as irregular and oppressive as the services. The ancient lords, though extremely unwilling to grant themselves any pecuniary aid to their sovereign, easily allowed him to tallage, as they called it, their tenants, and had not knowledge enough to foresee how much this must in the end affect their own revenue. The taille, as it still subsists in France, may serve as an example of those ancient tallages. It is a tax upon the supposed profits of the farmer, which they estimate by the stock that he has upon the farm. It is his interest, therefore, to appear to have as little as possible, and consequently to employ as little as possible in its cultivation, and none in its improvement. Should any stock happen to accumulate in the hands of a French farmer, the taille is almost equal to a prohibition of its ever being employed upon the land. This tax, besides, is supposed to dishonour whoever is subject to it, and to degrade him below, not only the rank of a gentleman, but that of a burgher, and whoever rents the lands of another becomes subject to it. No gentleman, nor even any burgher who has stock, will submit to this degradation. This tax, therefore, not only hinders the stock which accumulates upon the land from being employed in its improvement, but drives away an other stock from it. The ancient tenths and fifteenths, so usual in England in former times, seem, so far as they affected the land, to have been taxes of the same nature with the taille."

—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

• ... that Harry Steele purchased the Albatross Hotel in a bankruptcy sale and ultimately owned it for over half a century until his death?
• ... that the Darwin Rocksitters Club had "no funny business" as their first, third, and fifth rules?
• ... that despite little formal education, Earnest Andersson was a successful inventor, businessman, amateur athlete, race car driver, pilot, photographer, radio operator, pro golfer, and composer?
• ... that East Lake Square, a failed shopping mall in Tampa, Florida, was converted into a business park known as NetPark Tampa Bay in 1999?
• ... that in 2007, Jeremiah Moss started Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, a blog that functions as a "digital obituary column" for old New York City small businesses lost to gentrification?
• ... that Chicony, known primarily as a keyboard manufacturer, entered the computer-manufacturing business with the Rabbit 286 in 1988?

May 27:

• 1836 - Jay Gould, a leading American railroad developer and speculator, was born on this day.

• ...that Gold Fixing is the procedure by which the price of gold is set on the London market by the five members of the London Bullion Market Association?

• ...that the Heroninos Archive contains examples of a complex and standardized system of accounting used in 3rd century Roman Egypt?

• ...that Jerry White, cofounder of the Landmine Survivors Network, delivered the 2005 commencement address at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business?

• ...that the melting and export of cents and nickels can be punished with a fine of up to $10,000 and/or imprisoned for a maximum of five years?

• ...that the Vatican City, has an Automated teller machine (ATM) with instructions in Latin?

• ... that the GDP deflator (implicit price deflator for GDP) is a price index measuring changes in prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy.

• ... that Paul Krugman introduced returns to scale to the field of international trade, now referred to as new trade theory?

Wikinews Economy and business portal

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour