Tag Archives: Monetary Policy

 By Sue Konzelmann, John Weeks and Marc Fovargue-Davies ‘Rethinking Britain: Policy Ideas for the Many’ is a publication of Policy Press (19 September 2019), in partnership with PRIME and the Progressive Economic Forum (PEF).  Price £14.99, pre-orders £11.99 via Bristol University Press website. It is edited by Sue Konzelmann, Susan Himmelweit,...

Pesky physicists. ?Jason Smith "converses" with Milton Friedman.Short, fun, and not wonkish.Information Transfer EconomicsMilton Friedman's Thermostat, reduxJason Smith

Curiously, no mention of MMT. But useful for the analysis showing that monetary policy is not cutting it and that fiscal policy will inevitably gain in prominence. It is now pretty widely recognized that the period of monetarism spearheaded by Milton Friedman (and the Chicago School) as the "successor" of John Maynard Keynes as international policy guru is over. The question now is, who will the new gurus be? Will the pendulum swing back to Cambridge and Wynn Godley?FA — Financial...

In an environment of secular stagnation in the developed economies, central bankers’ ingenuity in loosening monetary policy is exactly what is not needed. What is needed are admissions of impotence, in order to spur efforts by governments to promote demand through fiscal policies and other means. Throwing in the towel (but not endorsing MMT). Politically, this is about control of the Democratic Party after the transition from Clinton-Obama-Third Way. Summers is on the side of the...

Rather than attempt to explain what the mainly neoclassical economists are going on about, I want to step back and try to translate their debate into terms that would be understood by people who do not share the same assumptions. I am pretty sure that post-Keynesian economists have a lot to say about the topic as well, but once again, they tend to be discussing wonkish points that would elude an outsider.…I have an engineering background, and engineering is largely the science of...

I am delighted to be in Helsinki at this important conference on monetary policy and the future of Europe's monetary union. Today I would like to discuss the broad review of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy framework that my fellow policymakers and I are undertaking this year. We are examining the policy strategy, tools, and communication practices that we use to pursue our dual-mandate goals of maximum employment and price stability. In my remarks, I will describe the motivation for...

While Lagarde said MMT is no panacea, she didn’t reject it outright.“While it is tempting, when you look at the sort of mathematical modeling of it, and it seems to stand, there are big caveats about it, such as if the country is in a liquidity trap, such as if there is deflation. Well then, in those circumstances, it could possibly work for a short period of time probably, because interest rates stay low until such time when they start going up. And then it is a bit of a trap.”-- April 11,...

It is Wednesday and so a less intensive blog post. Note how I no longer claim it will be shorter. The less intensive claim refers to how much research I have to put in to write the post. Apart from some beautiful music, the topic for today is yesterday’s RBA decision to cut interest rates to record low levels. The decision won’t save the economy from recession and highlights the sort of desperation that central bankers now face as governments shunt the responsibility of counterstabilisation...

T Sabri Öncü ([email protected], @tsoncu) is an economist based in İstanbul, Turkey. This article was sent on 7 June 2019 and published first on 15 June 2019 in the Indian journal Economic and Political Weekly.  Summary: Would market volatility amidst global trade tensions and uncertainty cause a global recession? Although...

If there were two lessons that can be taken from the GFC among others then we should know, once and for all, that, first, monetary policy (in all its glorious forms these days) is not a very effective tool for influencing the level of economic activity nor the price level, and, second, that fiscal policy is very effective in manipulating total spending and activity. Of course, those lessons provided the evidence that turned macroeconomics on its head because for several decades, as the...