by From Maria Alejandra Madi Much of the comments on the global financial and economic crisis have focused on the proximate causes and governance issues related to risk management, monetary policy and weak regulation. New political alignments allowed a process of global financial deregulations in the early 1970s. The political ascendancy of financial capital and extensive capital market liberalization, employment goals were abandoned in the economic policy agenda. Indeed, price stabilization and “fiscal prudence” turned out to be the primary objectives of the economic policy. As a result, prior to the 2008 global crisis, inflation was low and close to official inflation target rates in the advanced economies. However, credit bubbles threaten the macroeconomic stability. After the Global Crisis, academic economists and policy makers have actively participated in the debate on monetary policy in the United States and European Union. In the face of the outcomes of the crisis, central banks have dealt with a triple challenge how to contain the crisis how to prevent a recessionary downturn how to avoid enhancing financial instability in the form of inflationary pressures or asset and credit bubbles. The Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have faced major global financial challenges together.
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from Maria Alejandra Madi
Much of the comments on the global financial and economic crisis have focused on the proximate causes and governance issues related to risk management, monetary policy and weak regulation. New political alignments allowed a process of global financial deregulations in the early 1970s. The political ascendancy of financial capital and extensive capital market liberalization, employment goals were abandoned in the economic policy agenda. Indeed, price stabilization and “fiscal prudence” turned out to be the primary objectives of the economic policy. As a result, prior to the 2008 global crisis, inflation was low and close to official inflation target rates in the advanced economies. However, credit bubbles threaten the macroeconomic stability.
After the Global Crisis, academic economists and policy makers have actively participated in the debate on monetary policy in the United States and European Union. In the face of the outcomes of the crisis, central banks have dealt with a triple challenge
- how to contain the crisis
- how to prevent a recessionary downturn
- how to avoid enhancing financial instability in the form of inflationary pressures or asset and credit bubbles.
The Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have faced major global financial challenges together. However, within their respective zones, they coped with their institutional set-up and governance guidelines.
After the bail-outs, their main concern is whether nominal interest rates really have a lower bound around zero per cent. After the crisis, central banks responded to the large fall in aggregate demand and the under- utilized productive resources by adjusting the policy interest rates to, or very close to, zero. Indeed, these central banks have focused on lender-of-last-resort program extensions. The main question is: to what extent central banks can deal with huge levels of leverage, structural flaws of financial innovations (securitization, structured finance, and derivatives above all) and lack of transparency in terms of risk management?. read more