Monthly Archives: October 2013

Simon Wren Lewis writes ‘in defence of forward guidance‘.  He scolds Chris Giles, myself and others for ‘panning’ the Bank of England, for fear that it might retreat away from this bold experiment back into its natural, conservative, and insular … Continue reading →

MPC have stressed that their version of Forward Guidance, unlike the original Woodfordian policy to which the term normally refers, is quite different.  Unlike the Woodfordian policy, the Bank of England are not communicating that rates would be lower for … Continue reading →

Folks.  I found myself in a tricky position when I arrived.  The bosses in Whitehall were really taken with this thing about keeping interest rates lower for longer, and, frankly, since there was no way they could loosen fiscal policy, … Continue reading →

On Friday, Bank of England Chief Economist Spencer Dale is set to respond to twitter questions posted to #AskBoE.  This seems like a useful time to recap on previous posts on the fiasco, as I see it, surrounding the launch … Continue reading →

Simon Wren Lewis’ latest post on Mainlymacro rails against what he sees as an overemphasis on microfoundations in macro models.  Paul Krugman picked up this post, and it was reblogged and retweeted by Brad DeLong and probably others, referring to … Continue reading →

As the expected time at which the US will hit the current debt-ceiling approaches, with no sign of a deal, market participants’ guess at the probability that debt obligations will be defaulted on rises too.  This will act like a … Continue reading →

A couple of quick points following on from Simon Wren-Lewis’ mainlymacro post in response to Rogoff’s piece about UK austerity. Simon argues that the insurance against a flight from UK sovereign debt that ‘austerity’ provided (in quotes because, let’s face … Continue reading →

  [Title amended to copy Noah Smith’s catchier tweet of this post] I am just back from a conference on uncertainty hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.  John Taylor spoke over lunch about what he thought the causes … Continue reading →

Recently the Fed was criticised for talking about tapering and then, when it saw how much the yield curve and asset prices reacted, backing off.  The UK’s Monetary Policy Committee has likewise been criticised as somehow messing up forward guidance … Continue reading →