Category Archives: Uncategorized

David Allen Green’s latest blog – the latest in an FT series that has become compulsory reading – opines on a popular theory that the mess we are in has as its root cause the incompetence of Theresa May in … Continue reading →

This is a new product.  It’s a tour de force, ranging from obscure line items on government finances, to some philosophising about the nature of uncertainty. But it is not beyond criticism.  This post pulls together tweets I sent last … Continue reading →

Writing a serialised monetary policy dystopia seems to be a good way to thin out your readership, but I am going to plough on regardless. In the event of a partial take-over of a cryptocurrency, politics in the state may … Continue reading →

Continuing the dystopian theme – at least dystopian from the perspective of the fiat currency issuer – a partial take-over by a borderless cryptocurrency will pose interesting questions for central bank monetary policy. For starters, it will introduce a motive … Continue reading →

That headline was a bit strong. But a thought.  In a previous post on Alphaville I wrote about how the currency area that a private sector cryptocurrency created would be undesirable.  That was because it would likely straddle national borders, … Continue reading →

A simple point made to me recently at a talk on digital currencies is this.  There will come a point when comprehension that offering digital accounts with the central bank is possible becomes widespread.  Then, the discussion about whether it … Continue reading →

Two posts ago, I mentioned that the basic plan central banks had for withdrawing stimulus was to go first with rates, and then scale back QE. That plan was based on wanting to avoid the risk that, if another recession … Continue reading →

The Bank of England published its Financial Stability Report, and, along with it the decision of its Financial Policy Committee to raise the counter-cyclical capital buffer from 0 to 0.5%.  Interestingly, there is also an announced plan to raise this … Continue reading →

The original plan for balance sheet shrinkage, articulated by Bernanke in the States, and Mervyn King in the UK, was organised around the idea of spending as small an amount of time as possible using QE as the marginal tool … Continue reading →

It was very surprising to hear Janet Yellen hint in public that there was a good case for raising the inflation target. The economic logic of doing just that is very sound:  if we think that equilibrium real interest rates … Continue reading →