Monthly Archives: March 2014

The Government has announced plans to drop the requirement that pension holders be forced to purchase annuities when their pension plans mature.  This will have the positive benefit of allowing people to have more control over their savings, to be … Continue reading →

In a recent interview with Reuters, Adam Posen hit out at the Bank for having cosied up to the Banks, implicating the post-crisis Mervyn King leadership in that, and therefore urging on Carney’s efforts to bring about cultural transformation. I … Continue reading →

That was my reaction to the Mais lecture.    As well as seeming to me to be what the title of this post suggests, the relaunch was at the same time surprisingly, and almost unreadably dull, plodding through several management cliches … Continue reading →

Looking a little closer at the institution, and what might be ripe for ‘Review’. The first thing that comes to mind is the Bank’s Centre for Central Banking Studies [CCBS].  This is a Division of 5-10 economists, including management, and … Continue reading →

The Bank is shortly to publish its Strategic Review, in which it enlisted the help of Mckinsey consultants.  As an ex-BoE staffer with 20 years of pent-up ignored (no doubt ignorable and probably tainted) advice I can’t possibly resist the … Continue reading →

This post responds to recent interventions by Paul de Grauwe, which I think put up interesting counter-hypotheses to the position of the German constitutional court, essentially supporting the ECB, but don’t undermine their case. To recap on my previous posts … Continue reading →

Yesterday [11 March 2014] Andrew Tyrie, Chair of the Treasury Committee, the cross-party Parliamentary Committee charged with overseeing the Bank of England’s activities, asked the BoE to reconsider its policy of destroying transcripts of MPC meetings once MPC had signed … Continue reading →

Following on from my last post on transcripts.  Mike Bird at City AM featured that post and noted that transcripts are recorded, but destroyed after the MPC minutes are signed off and agreed by MPC members.  So, once MPC have … Continue reading →

My twitter feed has been stuffed with commentary about the recently released Fed transcripts and debates about the performance of the key personalities on the FOMC.  Apart from being great fun, it has only just struck me how useful these … Continue reading →