Tag Archives: globalization
Regulation at a dead end
Last week Charles Goodhart uttered what I called his cry of despair (See RP’s Diary 13/01/13); now it is BOE’s Andy Haldane’s turn. Goodhart has realised that we are running out of monetary policy models – rules or frameworks like inflation targeting (IT) by which central banks steer interest rate policies. He warns of…
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My New Year wishes
The world economic recovery remains fragile and could easily be derailed by renewed financial turmoil. My first wish is a terminological one – please, can we find a more useful word or phrase to describe what has happened? The word “crisis” and the phrases “financial crisis” , “great financial crisis”, “Global Financial Crisis” ,…
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Please, don’t fall in love with NGDPLT
The Fed, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England are said to be moving to adopt an acronym as the next love of their life – NGDPLT. The notion that monetary policy should aim to ensure steady growth in domestic output, measured in current prices, was first put forward during the…
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It’s the system, stupid!
One very senior former policy-maker has written to express his broad agreement with the analysis in The Money Trap. He cites three sentences on page 33, which sum up my review of the performance of the world economy since the collapse of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s: “The severity of the financial crisis…
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Why gold is back
In investment terms, we face a scenario that says neither bonds nor equities are likely to rise. The ‘uncertainty’ is greater than ever. And it is ‘uncertainty’ that drives people into gold, not relative values in paper currencies. We have to think that gold is the central thing around which everything else moves….
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Eurozone to lead world out of the money trap?
There is a long, long way to go. But confidence is gradually returning to the eurozone – confidence that at least a break-up of the eurozone will be avoided (thought his does not exclude the possibility that Greece may leave). The fall in spreads on Spanish and Italian bonds over German bunds is one…
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Volcker, Lagarde, Rees-Mogg and the Ikon
Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times, London and doyen of British commentators, has called for a reform of the global financial system (GFS). Rees-Mogg quotes Paul Volcker, who in a recent interview described the present period as one of the most difficult in history: “This is a recession on top of a complete financial…
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Will the Euromark be Europe’s Future?
The German government is being told by everybody outside Germany – and by many inside it – to rescue the euro. It must do so, according to the critics, by expanding demand, underwriting the issue of eurobonds, taking responsibility for feckless countries like Greece, bailing out dumb bankers, and backstopping extravagant, irresponsible governments. That is…
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