Monthly Archives: February 2018

ICYMI:  guest post on the Petro and the Assignat.

Wednesday’s Treasury Committee hearing with the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee featured an apparent squabble over whether exchange rate depreciations ‘worked’ or not.  It reads like something we could set students.  ‘OK who is wrong here, if anyone, and … Continue reading →

In case you missed these posts on New Statesman’s The Staggers blog: On the chances of Remain winning a 2nd Brexit referendum. And on why the ‘could have done better’ theory of Theresa May’s government, a theory beloved of those … Continue reading →

This tweet from Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s Political Editor, was the latest example of how misunderstandings about the nature of forecasting have clouded the debate about the costs and benefits of Brexit. Today [Feb8] the BoE released its latest inflation … Continue reading →

Jason Furman, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Obama, lately lamented the lack of a macroeconomic justification for the Trump tax cut.  This tax cut, as he and others have observed, has many flaws. Notable are:  the … Continue reading →

In the 1990s, there was the idea that equities were made safe because activist monetary policy would always be able to respond to a plunge, saving the real economy, and thus expectations of a sharp recession were thereby stabilised in … Continue reading →