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Tag Archives: euro

The Ikon: the best world money

States cannot create good money. They are interested parties. A good monetary system should discipline states – i.e. hold them to account. A state-run money cannot do that. That is the flaw in proposals such as those made by Positive Money and The International Movement for Monetary Reform. (Let me add, however, that I go…
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Brexit: Britain bows to its historic adversaries

Is there any comparable case of a great country voluntarily, without any need to do so, placing itself at the mercy of its historical adversaries? That is what the UK has done. Britain’s future is now at the disposal of the remaining countries of the European Union. After being weakened by the results of the…
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Brexit: Britain’s biggest mistake for 1,000 years

Matthew Parris (The Times, Oct 15) says Brexit is set to be Britain’s biggest screw-up since the Suez crisis of 1956. It is worse than that. The invasion of Egypt to regain Western control of the Suez Canal was an ill-judged gesture,  from which Britain recovered quickly; Brexit is likely to prove its greatest mistake…
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Let new model banks thrive

    In this week’s FT Money (25/26 January) , Merryn Somerset Webb, editor-in-chief, has some interesting remarks on banking. She points out that customers have new, and often better, ways to borrow than “via the traditional fleecing machines with their pricey real estate and unreliable IT systems”. There are new entrants to the market,…
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1. In the Trap

To mark publication of the “bigger and better” 360-page paperback (at £16.99 from Amazon, with a new 38-page preface) this and the following  posts list the book’s main themes, by Chapter, each with an update. Seen from November 2013, how have recent developments changed the analysis and/or policy prescription? Currrent Economic Outlook Although the short…
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II Searching for Ways Out

Recognising the public demand for reform, governments began a search for alternative policy models and structures soon after the outbreak of the global financial crisis (GFC). This can be viewed at national, regional and international levels. 5. Improving National Policies: At the national level this has taken the form of supplementing inflation targeting with various…
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Fred Bergsten calls for monetary reform

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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Lord Lawson aims at the wrong target

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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The “G20/IMF Communique”

  Nearly six years after the outbreak of the worst financial crisis in history, prospects for a full economic recovery remain elusive. Unemployment remains at very high levels, and standards of living for many people in developed countries are likely to fall over the first two decades of this century. Meanwhile, emerging markets remain vulnerable…
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Hypocritical protests at depositor bail-in proposal

Am I the only person to feel that the howls of moral outrage, protests and scathing editorials that greeted the first plan to “solve” the Cyprus banking crisis were somewhat overdone?. I myself joined in the criticism of the proposal to tax all deposits, and recommended the example of Iceland – while pointing out that Cyprus…
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