Monthly Archives: June 2015

Whether or not partial or whole Grexit prompts contagion will depend on the forces in favour of a transfer union amongst the remaining members.  Syriza has been talking up the risks of contagion, describing it as a near certainty, because … Continue reading →

Coeure’s comments that a Greek exit from the eurozone can ‘no longer be excluded’ is exciting much comment, and shock that it contrasts with previous declarations that euro membership was irreversible. I don’t know why anyone took the irreversibility so … Continue reading →

Some disorganised thoughts about what is going on. It baffles me why Krugman/Paul Mason and others on Twitter view the referendum as logical, or a masterstroke.  It will be a referendum on an out of date document.  That was not … Continue reading →

Simon Wren Lewis joins in the celebration of the Bank of England’s new blog for staff.  But I think he can be read as going a bit too far in divining a message – and discernible dissent – in one … Continue reading →

Today is a big day for the Bank of England. A staff blog, ‘BankUnderground‘, with connotations of radicalism that will be tough to live up to.   And a relaunch of their working paper series, now emphasised to be a Staff … Continue reading →

Hyun Shin’s presentation, at this week’s BoE/IMF/Hong Kong Monetary Authority conference on monetary policy and macro pru, went something like this. One dimension along which the dollar has become the global currency is in denominating debt, especially in emerging market … Continue reading →

This was my reaction to reading this document, circulated on Twitter today by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. It makes some controversial forecasts, for a start, including predicting that Greece would be booted out of the European Union, not just the Euro, if … Continue reading →

Duncan Weldon reiterated, on Twitter,  a point I read Huw Pill of Goldman Sachs make a while ago. The holdup in negotiations between the Troika and Syriza is described as being over the latter’s inability to support a cut in … Continue reading →

The Chancellor has announced that he wants to legislate to force future governments to run surpluses in ‘normal times’.  Two reasons make it hard to comment definitively on this proposal.  First, the devil will be in the detail of what … Continue reading →

Amartya Sen writes on austerity, comparing the futility of the Troika extracting primary surpluses from Greece and its other debtors to the self-defeating strategy of the Entente powers extracting reparations from Germany, the subject of a blistering critique in Keynes’ … Continue reading →