I wrote a piece on Keynes and monetary policy for the Standard, which appeared on Thursday, 23rd October, 2008. You can read it below. Today a group of monetarist economists , supported by a range of bankers, have written to the Telegraph objecting to a public works programme to help economic recovery. They are right […]
24th October, 2008 The NS has published a short piece this week: “Economists simply would not accept that their model could fail“. An introductory sentence is not mine: “Who would have predicted..that prudent Gordon Brown (would) breach the EU cap on government spending?” Am writing to the NS to ask for a correction to be
22nd October, 2008. I am dictating this piece down the phone from Budapest in Hungary where I have just arrived to deliver a lecture to the Ybl Club. My hosts were in a state of shock on arrival because the central bank of Hungary has just raised interest rates from 8.5% to 11.5%…
11th October, 2008 The sin of usury, diluted by Eck and the Fuggers banking family in the 1500s, ceased to be condemned as a sin after John Calvin (pictured) gave a license to the charging of interest. Usury as a sin should be brought back now, I argue in the columns of the Guardian today. Read the
Both the British Chancellor, Alastair Darling and the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, have been on the radio this morning, resisting the idea that interest rates are political. Instead they have argued, vehemently, that the Bank of England is independent, and that the Bank must decide whether or not to lower interest rates.
Rates: the BoE is not independent – it has a political mandate Read More »
Wednesday 1st October, 2008 The massive deflation/de-leveraging of credit and debt that is now cascading through the banking system and rapidly deflating the value of housing and other assets in the Anglo-American economies will precipitate large-scale, global economic failure, for years to come. Read more…
The Credit Crunch and the Green New Deal… in Compass Read More »
Tuesday 30th September, 2008. Anglo-American finance ministers and central bankers, like little Dutch boys, try desperately to plug leaks in the bursting dyke that is the international financial system. In the US, treasury secretary Hank Paulson hoped for $700bn to plug the gaping hole in Wall Street’s banks. In the UK, the government is not
Saturday, 27th September 2008. Lawmakers in the US struggle to come to terms with the scale of the financial crisis, the Paulson solution, and the role of government in resolving this crisis. Republicans, particularly conflicted, sabotaged the $700 billion bail-out last Thursday. At this moment Alan Greenspan proferrs advice from the lofty heights of the
A Mr. David Smith in a letter to the Financial Times, (29 Aug 08) has suggested we brand this global recession ‘the bankers’ recession’. He has my support and enthusiastic commitment to raising awareness of the brand. Especially after today’s UK news.
The Bankers’ Recession and the £200 billion bail-out Read More »
In this big bad world of the Credit Crunch, powerful central bankers – civil servants all – have bent over backwards to help powerful and rich private bankers. On one day, ‘debtonation day’, central bankers in Europe and the US pumped an eye-watering $150 billion into the financial system, to keep big banks afloat. According
Ratcheting up the interest rate rack of torture. Read More »
