Monthly Archives: February 2016

Suppose you had a vote on an interest-rate committee at a central bank.  And you were wondering how to figure out what the falls in global stock prices in 2016 meant for your vote. You might try to reassure yourself … Continue reading →

Adair Turner wrote arguing for helicopter money, as an alternative to lower, or negative interest rates, to stimulate the economy.  Paul Krugman comes down on the side of Adair, concluding that I have got confused about what effect a helicopter … Continue reading →

Exchanging tweets with Steve Williamson and JP Konig prompted the following set of thoughts.  Though they cannot be blamed for any silliness or errors below. The basic theme is that if currency arrangements are sufficiently messed up by the public … Continue reading →

Consider the following scenario. First, for reasons set out in my previous post, the news that Boris Johnson favours Out causes a sell-off of Sterling, and a credit downgrade for the UK. Second, the commentariat explains why this happened, concluding … Continue reading →

This post is for Giles Wilkes at the FT, who wanted a follow-up to my Tweets about the falls in Sterling reported as markets opened.  We might guess that this fall is the reaction to the news that Boris Johnson … Continue reading →

Paul Krugman worries that the reason why the Fed hiked by a quarter point in December 2015, and won’t immediately reverse course, is that their judgement has been impaired by talking to too many who work in banking, which industry … Continue reading →

In case you did not get these via Twitter, I wrote two pieces for NAR, which is an online newspaper that is owned by Nikkei the behemoth that recently swallowed the FT. This piece is on the BoJ’s move to … Continue reading →

Nick Macpherson, of course, isn’t dead. But EJ Thribb of Private Eye might well have written something like that about his latest speech, of which there cannot yet remain many more in his capacity as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, … Continue reading →

Since Mark Carney took over the Governorship of the Bank of England in July 2013, expectations of the first hike in rates from 0.5 have been pushed further and further back. Accommodating this – with a few hiccoughs along the … Continue reading →

Prompted by Adair Turner in an exchange on Twitter, I read this paper of his delivered to the IMF.  The paper is one to set current and former central bank pulses racing. It’s a measure of how far the crisis … Continue reading →