Tag Archives: Monetary Policy

A slightly edited version of this article first appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly on 22 July 2023. Summary: This article is the third and last in a series of articles on monetary policy debates in the age in which deglobalisation became a buzzword. Here, we continue our discussion of the ongoing Turkish monetary policy experiment by focusing on macroprudential measures, capital controls and central bank independence, as promised in the first article, as an example of these...

Another week goes by.  Hundreds of thousands of workers, mainly public sector, on strike last week, and again this week. Pay deals way below inflation. Zero movement from government.  Continuing disruption and decay. Why can’t a settlement be reached? Just before Christmas, Prime Minister Sunak told us “I want to make sure that we reduce inflation and part of that is being responsible in setting public sector pay..” On 1st February, Mr Sunak’s Official Spokesman said “We want to have...

 It's been evident for some years now that those selling risky crypto products to risk-averse investors like to have federal branding on their snake oil. Tether claimed to have 100% actual dollar backing for its stablecoin. Various exchanges and platforms claimed that customer deposits were FDIC insured. The New York Attorney General showed that Tether didn't have 100% dollar backing or anything like it. And now the FDIC has sent cease & desist orders to FTX, Voyager and several other...

This article first appeared in the Economic & Political Weekly on 12 November 2022. Monetary Policy Debates in the Age of Deglobalisation This article is the first in a series of two articles on monetary policy debates in the age in which deglobalisation is a buzzword. The ongoing monetary policy debates of the age will be discussed by focusing on macroprudential measures, capital controls and central bank independence in Part II. Introduction In a recent article, Kornprobst and Wallace...

Otmar Issing can look back on a long and consequential central banking career. Even in his retirement he is still living the part, evaluating whether his successors at the European Central Bank are pursuing stability-oriented monetary policies to his liking. His most recent critique (“‘Living in a fantasy’: euro’s founding father rebukes ECB over inflation response” https://www.ft.com/content/145b6795-2d21-48c6-984b-4b05d121ba16) shows him on the wrong side of events and debates about...

Many years ago, on family holiday in Wales, a problem arose when my father tried to turn our car and caravan around in an urban street.  A man noted generally for his calmness, Dad had got out and started looking at whatever the problem was.  My brother and I (ages 14 and 12) stayed in the back seat chatting away inconsequentially but, it seems, annoyingly.   Suddenly, Dad’s patience broke – “GET OUT AND DO SOMETHING!” he boomed.  Unaccustomed to such temper-induced imperatives, we leapt out...

 The November Lectures in Monetary Theory and Policy: Recent History and Contemporary Issues, given at the Higher School of Economics are now uploaded to Youtube at  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgRjyvJG4zZgXj8ThLBGSfg/videos  

An ECB’s Staff Narrative of Two Decades of European Central Banking: a critical review Working Paper n.866 Dicembre 2021Sergio Cesaratto DEPS, USiena Abstract Monetary Policy in Times of Crisis (Rostagno et al. 2021) has three relevant features. The first is its criticism of the absence of an adequate European fiscal policy during the financial crisis. This left the ECB on its own. The second feature concerns the...

Lekha Chakraborty(Professor, NIPFP, and Member of Governing Board, International Institute of Public Finance, Munich) Climate change is about risks and uncertainty. How well the monetary policy stance can incorporate such risks and uncertainties is questioned by many economists. There is a broad consensus among economists that fiscal policy is capable of dealing with the climate crisis but monetary policy is not, due to the latter’s lack of tools. It is widely acknowledged that public...

This article first appeared on the Project Syndicate website on 21st September, 2021 Fifty years ago, a US president closed the gold window, ended capital controls, and launched a new era of globalized finance. The “Nixon Shock” reshaped the international monetary system overnight, and then gradually changed the status of central bankers. Instead of acting as servants of the domestic economy, monetary policymakers have become masters of the globalized and financialized world economy. And...