About: robert

    Why is the effort to reform the global financial system failing? The previous posts in this series reviewed the failure to reform central banking. This final column looks at the fading prospects for a meaningful reform of commercial banking and then examines the ‘scapegoats’ used by  governments. We show how the three major players…
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Having listened to the three witches, and acted accordingly, only to be betrayed ‘in depest consequence’, our hero ‘Macbeth’ reaches his ascendancy, which marks the start of  his downfall. He has a moment of realisation… Have central banks also reached an epiphany?   Central banks have been instructed to keep their eyes not only on…
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I do not suppose that central bankers like to be compared to witches, but for my money the best account of how the financial crisis came about is in Macbeth. Banquo warns Macbeth to be wary of the witches’ implied promises: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us…
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When I first proposed that central banks might hold a basket of diversified equities on the assets side of their balance sheets, it was an unheard-of notion. My friends advised me to take it out. “People will think you’re crazy”, they said. Now it turns out that that is exactly what a growing number of…
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Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute is the “enfant terrible” of US international monetary and economic debate. Fending off the passing years, it is a role he has played with great panache for the best part of half a century. Always at the centre of things, always provocative, frequently infuriating, he has, as head of the…
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