Skip to Content

Tag Archives: Martin Wolf

Mad money: parallels with the 1970s

The current debate about monetary policies reminds me of the 1970s. Keynesian policies as then understood involved adjusting the fiscal “stance” of policy to ensure sufficient, but not excessive, effective demand. But these policies no longer had “traction”. The world was changing in ways that economists at the time struggled to understand.  Money was becoming…
» Continue Reading

Wolf of the City

Martin Wolf’s recent radio programme – “How Low can Rates Go?” – described and illustrated the dilemmas facing monetary policy-makers. Nine years from the start of the great financial crisis, Wolf reported, economies had still not returned to “normal”.  Capitalism was perceived by many to be failing to deliver; globalisation a con trick.  The political…
» Continue Reading

Bury inflation targets and get a real monetary framework

    To wean central banks from inflation targeting you’ll have to snatch it from them by force; they are clutching it ever more tightly to their breasts. But they must bid it a tearful goodbye. The big question is what will replace it. Mark Carney has said that: “Flexible inflation targeting is the most successful…
» Continue Reading

What the G20 should do at Los Cabos

“The global recovery has stalled again as confidence in policy makers’ ability to provide conditions for growth has slipped away” writes Chris Giles of the Financial Times, in his report from Los Cabos on the opening day of the G20 meeting there. According to the latest FT/Brookings Institution Tiger Index, world economic growth is stalling…
» Continue Reading