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Bank of England

Swap Ween

By |2020-06-19T19:06:51-04:00June 19th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It’s another one of those myths that gets repeated over and over because it has never been realistically challenged. Not in any public way. The Fed says its dollar swap lines, central bank liquidity swaps as they call them today, worked beautifully. They may not use that particular word to describe the results, but you are distinctly left with that [...]

The Real Price of Inflation Targeting

By |2019-03-04T16:40:38-05:00March 4th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

While still a professor of Economics at Princeton, future Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was also a Research Associate for the NBER. In 1999, in his capacities with the latter organization, Bernanke advocated for widespread adoption of inflation targeting. At that time, only a few central banks had experimented with it and there wasn’t much evidence for its effectiveness. Publishing [...]

The Very Important Task Of Trying To Figure Out What Happened In The Middle

By |2017-02-08T18:09:31-05:00February 8th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The whole point of any “stimulus” is to buy time. The idea is to keep the economy busy or, in the case of more purely monetary policy, happy during that time so that the economy on the demand side can on its own heal. In the parlance of orthodox economics, “stimulus” reduces the output gap, the difference between current output [...]

UK GDP Also Circles QE

By |2015-10-30T17:50:25-04:00October 30th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In addition to indications for a gathering slowdown in export power Germany, the UK has followed a similar line of late. That would make sense since both Britain and Germany are essentially the same kind of economy separated slightly in geography and currency. They both make much of their growth from the same marginal space; financial services, exports to the [...]

Inside of QE Is Apparently No Better

By |2015-09-09T18:36:12-04:00September 9th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In February 2010, Bank of England chief Mervyn King was very worried about the fragile nature of the British recovery as it fit within the more nebulous global hoard. There were emerging threats from an “unexpected” setback over a tiny little country on the Aegean, perhaps depressing Europe so soon out of the depths of the global Great Recession. Mervyn [...]

Central Banking Isn’t What It Used To Be; Or Is It?

By |2015-08-07T13:44:30-04:00August 7th, 2015|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It may be related or it may not, but the setup and decision by the Bank of England is far too close to the Federal Reserve to simply ignore or dismiss. While the FOMC added the word “some” to its policy statement at the last meeting to downgrade, really, its economic assessment, BoE accomplished much the same through different means. [...]

They Might Get To Wholesale Money In The Latter Half of This Century

By |2015-06-22T17:56:33-04:00June 22nd, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There has been a quiet Tobin revival which mirrors the unsuitability with which monetarism has found itself in a serial bubble world. I am referring to James Tobin, who did some great monetary theory back in the 1960’s when IS-LM and the “exploitable” Phillip’s Curve were groping for monetary relief. Specifically, money was believed to be a constraint in the [...]

From Unqualified ‘Savior’ To Afterthought In Only Five Months

By |2014-11-17T15:51:49-05:00November 17th, 2014|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

China’s figures last week were not “helpful” to the “global growth” narrative, and now Japan and Europe have contributed their share of turning sentiment. It seems as if credit markets might actually be on to something with all this bearishness standing in stark contrast to stock markets that just don’t care about much except self-feeding participation and corporate indulgence. There [...]

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