Tag Archives: The Money Trap
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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Gordon Brown on stubborn national politics
Gordon Brown is far from being my favourite politician. As economic Czar of Britain’s Labour government from 1997 to 2007 he started well – struggling hard and long to establish fiscal credibility – only to throw it all away. He then spent a miserable three years as prime minister to 2010 trying to contain the…
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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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Why Asia fears new currency war
The territory will be different – the sides will measure their gains and losses in terms of fractions of an exchange rate movement rather than yards of muddy land in Flanders. But the implications could be far-reaching. Nothing less than the future shape and health of the world economy is at stake. The…
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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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Good riddance to inflation targets
As predicted in The Money Trap, governments and central banks are preparing to ditch the inflation target regime of monetary policy. Hilariously if predictably, they are insisting that it has succeeded – but that it is time to move on. So long as they bury their heads in the sand like this, no…
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The New Bank of England
A well-informed correspondent, who did not want to be identified, predicts a full “spring clean”: “ I’m inclined to think Carney’s denial of interest (in becoming Governor) was genuine rather than a negotiation tactic like Napoleon’s thrice refusal of the title of emperor. However the denial of interest may have been based on…
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Some nuanced views of Mr Carney
The UK media have been gushing in their welcome. It is right to welcome central banking’s “rock star”. But not everybody has been carried away by the euphoria…you only have to scan the Canadian press today: Andrew Coyne at the Montreal Gazette That our banking system was not so badly mauled by the crisis as…
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What’s the G30 doing?
It follows the appointment of G30 member Mario Draghi to be president of the European Central Bank (which raised eyebrows in some circles, see here) . Last year also member Mervyn King became chair of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), the Global Economy Meeting (GEM) and the Economic Consultative Committee…
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