Category Archives: Uncategorized

This recent post by Steve Williamson explains, far better than I did, why no more conventional stimulus is needed in the US.  It’s an argument that carries over fairly neatly to the UK.  And the sort of analysis that confronts … Continue reading →

The Bank of England has been trying to clarify what it was doing when it launched its policy of forward guidance, committing not to think about tightening monetary policy until unemployment fell to 7% (provided….).  The fog is lifting somewhat, … Continue reading →

A UK, housing-industry lobby group, the Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors, recently called for the Bank of England to try to ‘cap’ annual house price increases at 5%.  This is in the context of evidence that house prices are accelerating … Continue reading →

Notice two arguments in George Osborne’s ‘mission accomplished’ speech. 1.  After several years of declining or stagnant output, we at last have evidence of  moderate growth in official data and other positive, survey indicators.  This demonstrates that those that argued … Continue reading →

Last Summer, the ECB stemmed the panic in peripheral sovereign debt markets with a promise.  The promise was to undertake ‘Outright Market Transactions’;  purchases of short-term debt issued by troubled sovereigns, from secondary markets, in quantities not limited at the … Continue reading →

Back in April, the Treasury published a report explaining, in short, that an independent Scotland could not be a member of a currency union, managed by the Bank of England, without considerable fiscal oversight.  The Scottish National Party (SNP) dismissed … Continue reading →

Not the modest interventions to try to stimulate lending, but the huge subsidies to bank borrowing implied by the state guarantee to prevent banks failing (discussed in various writings by Andrew Haldane), which allows them to borrow from private markets … Continue reading →