Search For: Allan Meltzer
A Debate with Allan Meltzer (Part 1)
This post and the next contain a recent email exchange that we have decided to make public
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…
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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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Allan Meltzer’s plan for world monetary reform
Testimony January 9, 2014, House Financial Services Committee
Professor Meltzer’s proposal can be compared with that advocated in “The Money Trap”. Both authors agree on the need for reform of the international monetary system; they agree this must entail discipline on fiscal and monetary policies of member countries and they also agre that any viable scheme should rest on the voluntary consent of…
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The Meltzer plan for world money
The basis for a new monetary order is already here
Professor Allan Meltzer has for some years advocated a reform of international monetary arrangements based on a joint adoption by large economies or areas of similar inflation targets. This is a summary. The US, the Euro, Japan and China (if it ends its currency controls) should adopt a common 0 to 2 percent…
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10-Year retrospective: Lesson 3
Why reform must be international
Gradually, inch by painful inch, the central bankers are losing their clothes – the comforting ideology that has enveloped them like a warm garment for more than a generation. This is the ideology, or “regime”, of central bank independence and inflation targeting (CBI+IT). Oh, how shy they are! Look how they hold onto any scraps!…
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The lowest interest rates in history are failing to spur sustained recovery. Rather, low real rates mirror financial and structural weaknesses Economists cannot agree on the causes of these low real rates. They discuss various hypotheses. Central banks have held policy rates low for years – have these ultra low nominal rates reduced real rates,…
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Why read Piketty?
Picking holes in the blockbuster
Can anybody give me a good reason to read “Capital in the 21st Century” by Thomas Piketty rather than, for example, Das Kapital by Karl Marx? At least Karl has a theory of financial crisis. Here is a roundup of comments by economists I know: Allan Meltzer points out that Piketty leaves out migration. For…
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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…
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Under present arrangements, finance too often acts as a malevolent force, rewarding private sectional interests at the expense of the public interest. This is because the globalisation of markets has run ahead of our power to control them. Properly harnessed, global finance could be, again, an enormously powerful force for good. Designing such a harness…
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The dollar crash risk
Stop this euphoria!
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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