Yearly Archives: 2019

Back in the day, monetary policy economists and practitioners discussed the benefits of delgating monetary policy to an independent central bank. There were two kinds. The first was to remove an ‘average inflation bias’.  Think of a two period game.  … Continue reading →

In recent blog posts, I have been advancing ideas that respond to the frightending dysfunction in the UK polity. 1.  Separation of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales into individual, independent countries embedded into the EU, and England levered to tether … Continue reading →

One feature of Brexit from the perspective of those who see political and economic benefits to remaining a member of the EU is that there is no safe, perpetual compromise position. There are soft versions of Brexit in which almost … Continue reading →

A striking feature of the post Referendum period is the radicalization of Leavers.   Amongst leading protagonists, many supported remaining in the EU’s single market during the campaign.  Subsequently, the focus shifted towards leaving the single market and customs union in … Continue reading →

Much was made of the first poll in favour of Scottish independence.  The calculus is changing.  I would argue that for a variety of reasons, independence is now more attractive. Relative to 2014, the first benefit is removing Scotland from … Continue reading →

Lewis Goodall, Political Correspondent for Sky, wrote a thread on Twitter today concluding with a familiar line that Remainers are not good at politics.  They ‘may as well pack up and go home’.  They are ’embarrassingly bad at politics’.   The … Continue reading →

Positive Money and I have had an exchange of blog posts on FT’s Alphaville about their suggestions for what the successor to Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, should and should not do. I remain deeply opposed to … Continue reading →

Positive Money wrote a letter making representations about what Carney’s successor should do.  Here is my post about it on FT’s Alphaville blog.  If you haven’t come across my stuff before, there is a dump of my previous posts and … Continue reading →

Leading figures in Labour like Jess Phillips were out on social media today, with a call to arms to fight the reactionary tendencies represented by The Brexit Party, promising to oppose with progressivism. This is a difficult pitch for Labour.  … Continue reading →

The Liberal Democrat campaign slogan has come under fire.  I think it’s a great slogan. It weaves together different feelings of those against the project:  ‘oh for God’s sake make it stop this is turning out really badly’ [recall Jolyon … Continue reading →