Category Archives: Uncategorized

Simon Wren Lewis joins in the celebration of the Bank of England’s new blog for staff.  But I think he can be read as going a bit too far in divining a message – and discernible dissent – in one … Continue reading →

Today is a big day for the Bank of England. A staff blog, ‘BankUnderground‘, with connotations of radicalism that will be tough to live up to.   And a relaunch of their working paper series, now emphasised to be a Staff … Continue reading →

Hyun Shin’s presentation, at this week’s BoE/IMF/Hong Kong Monetary Authority conference on monetary policy and macro pru, went something like this. One dimension along which the dollar has become the global currency is in denominating debt, especially in emerging market … Continue reading →

This was my reaction to reading this document, circulated on Twitter today by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. It makes some controversial forecasts, for a start, including predicting that Greece would be booted out of the European Union, not just the Euro, if … Continue reading →

Duncan Weldon reiterated, on Twitter,  a point I read Huw Pill of Goldman Sachs make a while ago. The holdup in negotiations between the Troika and Syriza is described as being over the latter’s inability to support a cut in … Continue reading →

The Chancellor has announced that he wants to legislate to force future governments to run surpluses in ‘normal times’.  Two reasons make it hard to comment definitively on this proposal.  First, the devil will be in the detail of what … Continue reading →

Amartya Sen writes on austerity, comparing the futility of the Troika extracting primary surpluses from Greece and its other debtors to the self-defeating strategy of the Entente powers extracting reparations from Germany, the subject of a blistering critique in Keynes’ … Continue reading →