Category Archives: Uncategorized

Doves and credibility

Marvin Goodfriend made a telling contribution to the Shadow Open Markets Committee – the US equivalent to our Shadow Monetary Policy Committee.  [h/t David Andolfatto for sharing that]. His remarks lead us to note that while the Fed has a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

The Governor’s eyebrows and the climate

This post is a repeat of many before, and consolidates Tweets from yesterday that were picked up in the FT story by Ferdinando Giugliano. We’ve now had speeches from the BoE urging inclusive capitalism [Carney], on the benefits of volunteering … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Unrevised inflation should put to bed the monetary and fiscal revisionism

The latest vintage of UK GDP released by the Office for National Statistics has revised up growth rates through the post crisis period significantly.  It’s caused some to speculate that this vindicates George Osborne’s ‘austerity’ policies, and others to wonder … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Is Labour right to review the BoE mandate?

This is the question posed in Robert Peston’s blog today.   My answer:  yes and no. No, also, because while no mandate, certainly not the existing BoE one, is likely to be word-perfect, there should be a pretty high bar set … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

How many Corbyns have you had today?

Two recent blogs on Corbyn, in case you missed them.  Someone responded to one of these posts:   ‘My first Corbyn of the day.  Must cut down.’ If you haven’t exceeded the recommended number of Corbyns today, click through below. … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Martin Sandbu and Silvio Gessel

Here Martin picks up on the Haldane speech about negative rates, and some of us that criticised him for supporting that option to escape the confines of the zero bound. MS rightly points out that one would not need to … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

The leftist Brexit urge is irrational

Picking up a point I tweeted about a few days ago, and, I think, also pointed out independently by Chris Giles…. It’s a curious thing that the right in the UK may want to leave the EU if David Cameron … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Haldane on coping with the zero bound.

This speech is an interesting overview of the difficulty that faces monetary policy mandate designers in this era of low equilibrium real interest rates. AGH tilts towards reforming monetary institutions to allow for substantially negative interest rates, rejecting permanent use … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Fed tightening, asymmetric risks, and possibility of negative rates.

A quick comment on this thoughtful post by the great JP Koning, whose posts on monetary econ and finance have become regular reading for me since I found him on the internet. JP makes the point that the possibility that … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Richard Murphy, Bank Rate and bank margins

Here Richard Murphy points out that a rise in Bank Rate would lead to a rise in margins.  This is a fair argument. Indeed, the main reason why MPC decided not to cut rates closer to the zero floor in … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments