Category Archives: Uncategorized

If the document being described as a leak of a draft of the Labour manifesto really is that, the section on fiscal policy, tweeted by Robert Peston, is interesting. It contains the encouraging suggestion that HMT rules would be suspended … Continue reading →

There are a lot of talking points in this fun post on FTAlphaville by Matthew Klein. The piece is a spirited defence of the idea of returning to the gold standard, based on logic that Martin Sandbu uses as a … Continue reading →

Thanks to Alan Beattie at the FT for prompting me to think about this. He tweeted an extract from the mandate of the UK’s ‘Low Pay Commission’, which sets a UK NMW.  This extract states that the aim is to … Continue reading →

The Fed’s John Williams has commented that the Fed should revisit the inflation target to provide for future episodes in which very low interest rates are needed. This is welcome.  Blanchard, Krugman, and many others have made the same argument. … Continue reading →

Mark Carney gave opening remarks on a panel on ‘law, ethics and culture in banking’.  I thought they were unfortunate. They come shortly after the resignation of Charlotte Hogg, newly appointed Deputy Governor at the BoE.  She had forgotten to … Continue reading →

The SNP have called for a second referendum on Scottish independence, and many feel this is the direct result of the Prime Minister steering us towards a ‘hard Brexit’:  exit from the single market and the customs union. This seems … Continue reading →

Budget day.    Article 50 is about to be invoked.  From here until actual EU exit, there is a sizeable risk of a sharp reduction in growth, or even a recession, as information emerges about the likely terms of trade with … Continue reading →

Watching the Bank of England Inflation Report Press Conference webcast this week, the subject of whether a monetary policy mistake was made in the aftermath of the Brexit vote in June loomed, with questions from Ben Chu and others.  This … Continue reading →

Last year, I wrote this post.  Worrying about a vortex of ever lower prosperity and policy rationality.  It was in the aftermath of the EU referendum in the UK, which can be taken to be a vote against immigration and … Continue reading →

Before the financial crisis, a standard assumption [I subscribed to] was that the Southern peripheral countries were on a path converging their income per capita to Northern levels, and as such, through Balassa-Samuelson effects, experiencing faster inflation.  The Balassa-Samuelson effect … Continue reading →