Tag Archives: The Money Trap
A Debate with Allan Meltzer (Part II)
On 15 March, 2014, at 22.24 Robert Pringle wrote: WHAT WE AGREE ON It is necessary to agree on many things to have a useful discussion, and it is not surprising we do as my thinking has been much influenced by yours for many years. In a sense I am trying to reconcile my understanding…
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Mark Carney tries on his new hats
As predicted in The Money Trap, central banks are in process of ditching inflation targeting as a monetary rule. Needless to say, this is not how they see it. At the Bank of England, Mark Carney thinks he looks fancy wearing the new hats George Osborne has given him. He tried them on…
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Adair Turner (1): Right on the case for radical reform
One person who fully grasps the urgent need for more radical reforms is Lord (Adair) Turner, former head of Britain Financial Services Authority. He also specifies what reforms he feels are needed and makes an eloquent plea for them. These two features set his contributions apart from 90% of writings on the topic. Here I…
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Adair Turner (2): Misguided remedies
Caveat: I should mention to begin with that this critique is based on Lord Turner’s paper on “Escaping the Debt Addiction”; one paper cannot cover every area and he has (I understand) written a soon-to-be-published book that will presumably range more widely. The approach in this paper can be compared with that developed…
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The bare bones of a new policy regime
As argued in the post “Regime Uncertainty Undermines Confidence”, only a new policy regime, not changes to individual policy areas (such as regulatory policy) will reduce the existential angst that is crippling business and over-shadowing the recovery. New money….. It should establish a global currency standard. The standard should be sufficiently attractive that countries…
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German power needs global fetters
One side-effect of the comic opera that is the Hollande presidency of France is to knock it out, at least temporarily, as a serious counterpart to German strength in Europe. That is a coming challenge for the whole international community, not just for the European Community. Germany is always portrayed as the…
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How vulnerable is the dollar?
There is no point dreaming about a new monetary order when the dollar remains dominant and is here to stay. At least, for all practical purposes. That is the bottom line of most commentaries on proposals to reform the international monetary system, such as that advanced in The Money Trap. Indeed, the…
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When international monetary reform will be politically attractive
A common criticism of proposals for reform of the international monetary system is that they are not politically possible. Of course, there are other grounds on which they can be and are criticised – especially when they call for a return to stable exchange rates, a howl goes up that this would sacrifice the domestic…
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Debating the nature of money
At the conclusion of a recent star-studded IMF conference, chief economist Olivier Blanchard argued that we may need negative real interest rates for a long time. Here is the passage in full: “Now let me now turn to monetary policy, and touch on three issues: the implications of the liquidity trap, the provision of liquidity,…
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My take on Mr Carney
I have written elsewhere about Mr Carney’s first 5 months (subscription) at the Bank of England. I showed that in terms of the goals he was set by the UK Treasury (both those stated and those unstated but implicit in his appointment), he has made remarkable progress – with luck playing a part. The UK economy has…
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