Skip to Content

Tag Archives: Jacques de Larosiere

The Ikon: the best world money

States cannot create good money. They are interested parties. A good monetary system should discipline states – i.e. hold them to account. A state-run money cannot do that. That is the flaw in proposals such as those made by Positive Money and The International Movement for Monetary Reform. (Let me add, however, that I go…
» Continue Reading

‘The Money Trap’ now

The book argued that the crisis was the joint product of  inflation targeting, irresponsible banking and a weak international monetary system. The book tried to show how these were inter-related: First, inflation targeting, which had been a valuable tool in combatting 1970s inflation, had by the 2000s outlived its usefulness as a guide and discipline for…
» Continue Reading

William White: Why we need to debate exchange rates

William White, formerly head of monetary and economic affairs at the Bank for International Settlements and now chair of a key OECD committee,  is one of the few mainstream economists willing and eager to keep the debate about exchange rates systems alive. Most of them want to bury it. In a paper published by the…
» Continue Reading

Encounters with Paul Volcker and Jacques de Larosière

  This month I have enjoyed wonderful conversations  with three elder statesman of international finance and economic policy – Paul Volcker, Jacques de Larosière and Allan Meltzer. They all agreed on one big thing – much of what has gone wrong is down to the absence of a proper international monetary system. This is a…
» Continue Reading

A Debate with Allan Meltzer (Part 1)

Professor Allan Meltzer debates international monetary issues and The Money Trap with Robert Pringle   On 3/14/2014 12:57 PM, Robert Pringle wrote:   Allan, Thinking further about the international monetary system, I now find it difficult to conceive monetary stability being established in one country alone – even if that country is the US. This…
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading

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….
» Continue Reading

Countries in mutual suicide pact

The appalling UK GDP figures, which mark the longest period of contraction for 100 years, plus the weakening of US and Euro area economies, provides yet further evidence that current policies everywhere are failing. Yet the debate on what to do is getting nowhere. The sterile argument between Keynesian expansionists and advocates of austerity continues. That…
» Continue Reading