Monthly Archives: April 2015

Simon Wren Lewis has a string of posts explaining what he describes as several ‘myths’ of ‘mediamacro’, and contrasting that with how he sees the true narrative of the financial crisis and the different governments’ conduct during it. I want … Continue reading →

The Conservative Party’s latest extra-manifestorial outburst that they would outlaw rises in certain taxes if they were elected takes the biscuit.  They have not been alone in electorally-motivated and economically inexplicable tax gestures – the Labour Party have indulged too … Continue reading →

Today it seems to have gone public that the Bank of England are to start a blog, calling it ‘Bank Underground’.  Toby Nangle tweeted that he hoped the blog would be less confusing than its namesake. If this is happening, … Continue reading →

One thing that’s interesting about the election is that no-one has seriously questioned the new settlement of powers within the Bank of England.  Perhaps there is discord, but it simply gets filed under ‘too hard to worry the voters’ pretty … Continue reading →

I just noticed this article by the FT’s Sam Fleming, in which he writes that Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren has pointed out the potential benefits of raising the US inflation target.  The implication being – as Blanchard, Krugman and … Continue reading →

John Taylor [here/here] recently reiterated his views on what caused the global financial crisis. He contends the following.  That the Great Moderation was due to adherence to the Taylor Rule [and to ‘rules-based’ fiscal policy].  That during the early 2000s, … Continue reading →

Steve Keen is on top form in his latest Forbes column. He thinks that when it’s pointed out to Munchau who says ‘their [mainstream macro economists’] system of equations is linear’ that it is very often not, that this is … Continue reading →

I like Wolfgang Munchau’s columns on the Eurozone crisis a lot.  But this one on claiming that macroeconomists need new tools is serious overreach.  Anyone actually building, solving or just reading others’ models, will see that it isn’t right, not … Continue reading →

Matt O’Brien has a thought-provoking piece on Wonkblog at the Washington Post. It’s about the curious business of the modern Republicans turning their back on what most mainstream economists would now view as ‘sound money’.  Namely the active use of … Continue reading →

Ben Chu kindly hosted and edited this version of an old blog post of mine on the Independent’s ‘Chunomics’ blog, explaining why think it was a bad idea for the Chancellor to let pensioners take their pensions as lump sums.