Tag Archives: IMF
Fred Bergsten calls for monetary reform
Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute is the “enfant terrible” of US international monetary and economic debate. Fending off the passing years, it is a role he has played with great panache for the best part of half a century. Always at the centre of things, always provocative, frequently infuriating, he has, as head of the…
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How central banks undermine the market economy
The risks and dangers for the global economy are like hidden reefs for a ship – invisible but deadly. It is quite possible, for example, that expansionary US monetary policy can cause an asset boom in China so large that its collapse would bring the Chinese economy down with it – and thus throw the…
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How the international monetary system holds back recovery
Ever since the end of Bretton Woods, exchange rate volatility driven by diverse monetary policies and diverse expectations about future exchange rates have been frequent sources of shocks to the world economy and national economies. The very existence of independent central banks with independent monetary policies is the common origin of shocks. The more…
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The “G20/IMF Communique”
Nearly six years after the outbreak of the worst financial crisis in history, prospects for a full economic recovery remain elusive. Unemployment remains at very high levels, and standards of living for many people in developed countries are likely to fall over the first two decades of this century. Meanwhile, emerging markets remain vulnerable…
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The Battle of Bretton Woods
Yesterday I kicked off a round-table discussion organised by the CSFI of Benn Steil’s new book which carries this title. This is what I said. Benn Steil starts this stimulating book by poking fun at those politicians and others who have, in recent years, called for “a new Bretton Woods”. They have all been disillusioned….
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Man is born free and everywhere he is in debt
Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Graeber is fascinated by the past. Indeed, Graeber might have started his book (“Debt: the first 5,000 years”) with an echo of the famous opening of The Social Contract: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. But perhaps he thought that would be presumptuous. Graeber starts off…
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Iceland, not Ireland, is the model for Cyprus
Ex ECB board member Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi has a piece in tomorrow’s FT where he says Ireland is the model that Cyprus should follow. Really? To be sure, Ireland has done well. But there is a better example – from outside the eurozone. It’s Iceland, not Ireland, that has pioneered the way for small…
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The dollar crash risk
As Jacob (“Jack”) Lew, the ex Citibank man who has succeeded Tim Geithner as US Treasury Secretary, surveys his inheritance, one thing he will probably not be worrying about is the dollar. Perhaps he should. True, prospects for the US currency have brightened recently. This reflects the new spring in the step of the American…
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The ECB should cap the euro
Governments of the Euro area and the ECB must not let the euro strengthen to the point where it threatens the euro area recovery. It should not rise above $1.40 – it is now at $1.31. When the euro strengthened sharply in 2009, it triggered weakness that led to the euro sovereign debt crisis. But…
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Christine Lagarde gets it wrong
“The financial system can work if each of its members follow the right principles for their economy” M Lagarde has had a successful year at the Fund but this statement at the G20 meeting in Moscow yesterday shows the Fund has not learnt the key lesson of the economic disaster. The mistaken…
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