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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The risks and dangers for the global economy are like hidden reefs for a ship – invisible but deadly. It is quite possible, for example, that expansionary US monetary policy can cause an asset boom in China so large that its collapse would bring the Chinese economy down with it – and thus throw the…
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Governments’ failure to manage the global financial crisis is having profound political and geo-political consequences – all of them adverse. Fuelled by political desperation to boost demand, national monetary policies are becoming steadily more aggressive – not so much “beggar my neighbour” as “sauve qui peut”. Financial repression is ongoing. As we all know, once…
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What are the differences between a commodity money, credit money and the Ikon – currency of the future ? Using the gold standard as an example of the first, where the price of gold was fixed and money was convertible into it on demand at that price, gold and sure claims on gold were money….
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  Ever since the end of Bretton Woods, exchange rate volatility driven by diverse monetary policies and diverse expectations about future exchange rates have been frequent sources of shocks to the world economy and national economies. The very existence of independent central banks with independent monetary policies is the common origin of shocks. The more…
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The most common response I have had to the proposals made in my book for a new banking system and global monetary reform is that they are too radical, too ambitious, and won’t happen. When I ask such critics (who are usually of a friendly disposition) what are they suggesting, they usually reply that slow…
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