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 …
Going cold turkey would finish off a dysfunctional global financial system that’s now hopelessly addicted to emergency infusions. The only solution is surgery on the system itself.The system, notionally governed by the invisible hand of the market, is no longer governed in any meaningful way: private excess puffs up bubbles that government indulgence ensures can never burst. We seem condemned to volatile commodity prices, wild capital flows, worsening imbalances in trade, taxation and income, and—before long—the next sovereign debt crisis.
13th March, 2020 Dear Mr. Bailey, Your predecessor in a speech in 2019 outlined the deficiencies of the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS). The IMFS was cobbled together after the collapse of Bretton Woods and the 1971 Nixon Shock, and is governed effectively by Wall St. and the City of London – ‘citizens of …
My letter to the Governor of the Bank of England on his appointment. Read More »
12 November, 2018 This year is the 150th anniversary of the TUC, and the 70th anniversary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. As part of the celebration of these achievements, the TUC’s Economics and Social Affairs department organised an event “Lessons from the Great Financial Crisis” – on 12th November, 2018 – …
2007-9: Central bank coordination saved the finance sector, but not the world. Read More »
Readers of this blog may know that Patrick Allen, founder of the Progressive Economy Forum (PEF) invited me to become a member of its distinguished Council in July this year. Other members include Professors John Weeks, Joseph Stiglitz, Stephany Griffiths-Jones, Robert Skidelsky, Daniela Gabor, Danny Darling, Ha Joon Chang and Doctors Johnna Montgomery, Geoff Tily, …
How governments finance their spending (and its not from taxation). Read More »
That was the question put to me by Ruth Potts, then editor of Red Pepper magazine. My reply was published in the 17 September, 2018 edition of the magazine – Creating the Future. If such an implausible appointment were ever to be made by a Labour Chancellor, I would regard my appointment as Governor of …
What would you do – if appointed as governor of the Bank of England? Read More »
Extract from an article written for PEF Carney does not seem to be aware, but central bankers’ groupthink today unites once again around the “normalcy” of a single policy: financial globalisation, or unfettered financial capitalism. In other words, the deregulation and globalisation of markets in money, goods, services, property and labour is once again the …
On “the policy” and the Governor of the Bank of England Read More »
The BoE’s decision to raise the Bank Rate to 0.75% is a mistake. It is a mistake comparable to those made by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve in the years between 2003 and 2006. It is a mistake that must be understood in a wider context. Not just the political context – which promotes ‘monetary radicalism …
What Is Wrong with the Bank of England’s Decision Today? Read More »
I wrote this post on the 21st April, 2018, for PRIME. “There are a significant number of households that are in so deep that the slightest sign of rough weather could see them in over their heads,” said Jonathan Davidson, one of the FCA’s directors of supervision. Given these imbalances, the biggest danger facing the …
Why the Bank of England Should Not Raise the Bank Rate Read More »
The production of money is ultimately the struggle for control over resources, wealth, people and our environment. But there is a surprising level of ignorance around how banks create money out of thin air and the benefits which flow from it. So on this programme we shine a much-needed light on who should get the …
