Tag Archives: Bank of England
Nonsense on bank pay
Antony Jenkins, who replaced Bob Diamond as chief executive of Barclays Bank during the Libor scandal, says that Barclays should be seen as a bank that is “doing well financially and behaving well”. Now Sir David Walker, the urbane chairman (and G30 alumni) and Jenkins hope that by revealing the numbers earning more than £1…
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The ECB should cap the euro
Governments of the Euro area and the ECB must not let the euro strengthen to the point where it threatens the euro area recovery. It should not rise above $1.40 – it is now at $1.31. When the euro strengthened sharply in 2009, it triggered weakness that led to the euro sovereign debt crisis. But…
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The turning point for gold – now what?
Following my last post on gold, I got several comments: for and against. One said that the real reason gold has come back over the past 10 years is that central banks have stopped selling and started buying again. Indeed! Net gold purchases by central banks in 2012 were 534 tonnes –…
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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…
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The Fed at 100
The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by President Wilson on December 23 1913. Its purposes were “To provide for the establishment of Federal reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes.”…
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Regulation at a dead end
Last week Charles Goodhart uttered what I called his cry of despair (See RP’s Diary 13/01/13); now it is BOE’s Andy Haldane’s turn. Goodhart has realised that we are running out of monetary policy models – rules or frameworks like inflation targeting (IT) by which central banks steer interest rate policies. He warns of…
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Is real reform within our grasp?
Not many central bankers or regulators are willing or able to think deeply about the nature of money and the implications of the collapse of trust in banking. Two exceptions are Mervyn King and Peter Praet. This post is about them and other thinkers worth attending to. King’s views are well known and he…
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Goodhart’s cry of despair
Five years after the international banking system fell into the arms of the central banks and governments, there is still a paralysing uncertainty about the extent and cost of regulation, the viability of banking models and the monetary policy regime. More about financial regulation and banking models in future columns. Now let us look…
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My New Year wishes
The world economic recovery remains fragile and could easily be derailed by renewed financial turmoil. My first wish is a terminological one – please, can we find a more useful word or phrase to describe what has happened? The word “crisis” and the phrases “financial crisis” , “great financial crisis”, “Global Financial Crisis” ,…
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Please, don’t fall in love with NGDPLT
The Fed, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England are said to be moving to adopt an acronym as the next love of their life – NGDPLT. The notion that monetary policy should aim to ensure steady growth in domestic output, measured in current prices, was first put forward during the…
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