Utopia, you are standing in it!

Over the last few days I’ve been reading a few pieces on UK monetary policy and high inflation. The first was a speech from the Deputy Governor responsible for economics and monetary policy, Ben Broadbent (over there senior central bankers actually give serious and thoughtful speeches on things the Bank has responsibility for), and the second was a new paper by long-term adviser, analyst and researcher Tim Congdon. There is a lot of overlap because Congdon’s paper is broader (“Why has inflation come back”) but his analytical approach has tended to emphasise the monetary aggregates, while Broadbent’s speech which is narrower in focus is specifically on the question of what information value for monetary policymakers there is (or isn’t) in the monetary aggregates over the longer term and in the specific context of the inflation of the last couple of years. Both are worth reading.

My own view on the…

It’s election year and the sniping between political parties has ramped up as expected.

While the big battalions of Labour and National have only exchanged long-range shots there’s plenty of activity among the minor players.

Unfortunately for them (but popcorn time for the rest of us), one of those smaller players – the Green Party – has chosen an election year to start a civil war within their own ranks.

Over at Kiwiblog, DPF has noticed what’s going on with one Elizabeth Kerekere at the forefront firing not just insults stupidly at one of the best politicians they have, Chloe Swabrick, but spraying fire across the party in general.

But it now appears to be about more than just sniping. It looks Kerekere has mates and they’re determined to take over the Green Party – and they’re Marxists.

And it’s not just the usual suspects like DPF pointing…

Decades ago I worked for a central bank in another country. I woke up one morning to learn that the Governor had been sacked, and by the time I got to work he was clearing his desk. He hadn’t done a bad job – and was one of the more inspiring people I ever worked for – but had fallen foul of the government (Minister of Finance and his colleagues/bosses). The law as it was meant that Governor could be removed whenever the government felt like it. for whatever reason the government felt like. It wasn’t a good model.

In the numerous attempts to capture just how independent various central banks are, one of the dimensions that usually appears is something around the dismissal provisions for key decisionmakers (in these days of committees and board, not just the Governor). Many older pieces of central banking legislation make it very hard…

The image might be the way most of us remember that consummate showman, the entertainer’s entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr.

He’s laughing, often as not surrounded by white actors, singers, comics or politicians — some of them his peers — most of them less dazzling in at least one of the singer/dancer/actor and funnyman’s proficiencies.

Somebody — a fellow Rat Packer (Sinatra, Dino, Lawford or Bishop), Nixon, this comic or that Civil Rights icon — has said something funny, maybe only mildly amusing, maybe faintly/comically racist in the case of his Vegas/”Ocean’s 11″ Pack. And Sammy D’s laugh would consume his face, doubling him over, eyes closed, making you think you’d missed the best joke or quip this showbiz legend had ever heard.

But if you listen to audio of such occasions, as Yale professor and cultural historian Matthew Frye Jacobson did, you won’t “hear” that laugh. It was, often as…