Tag Archives: The Money Trap
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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Thatcher, Volcker, Keynes and the power of ideas
The death of Margaret Thatcher reminds us all of the power of ideas, when allied to guts and leadership, to change the world. She identified one area of national life after another where restrictions and old ways of doing things were holding back innovation and the spirit of enterprise that lay dormant in the British…
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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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Hypocritical protests at depositor bail-in proposal
Am I the only person to feel that the howls of moral outrage, protests and scathing editorials that greeted the first plan to “solve” the Cyprus banking crisis were somewhat overdone?. I myself joined in the criticism of the proposal to tax all deposits, and recommended the example of Iceland – while pointing out that Cyprus…
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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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How to control those central bankers
Last Tuesday I went along to the Adam Smith Institute to listen to Brendan Brown launch his new book, “The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve”. Brendan picked out three channels through which central banks’ ultra-low interest rate polices can trigger asset price inflation (followed invariably by a crash): Central bank pegging of…
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Bank of Japan enters the money trap
The first thing to say about Haruhiko Kuroda, nominated as the next governor of the Bank of Japan, is that he is a very nice man. Whenever I have met him, he has been not only modest and friendly, but also ready, willing and able to discuss policy issues and ready to modify his opinion…
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Nonsense on bank pay
Antony Jenkins, who replaced Bob Diamond as chief executive of Barclays Bank during the Libor scandal, says that Barclays should be seen as a bank that is “doing well financially and behaving well”. Now Sir David Walker, the urbane chairman (and G30 alumni) and Jenkins hope that by revealing the numbers earning more than £1…
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Why Asia did not cause the financial crises
New attempts are being made to resuscitate the “savings glut” hypothesis of the origins of the great financial collapse and recession and the eurozone’s agony. This hypothesis is wrong. What matters is not saving but financing. Countries running current account surpluses do not finance those running current account deficits.The deficits are financed…
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