Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (and FOMC), Ben Bernanke, was yesterday the first of two keynote speakers at the Reserve Bank’s conference to mark 35 years of inflation targeting, which first became a formalised thing here in New Zealand. He indicated that he’d be speaking about inflation targeting in general and […]
Adrian Orr has resigned as Reserve Bank Governor. I normally try to highlight the good as well as the bad when someone resigns, but I have to admit in this case I struggle. I welcomed his appointment in 2017. I noted the currency rose on his appointment and that he had a very good legacy […]
Roger Partridge writes: A new submission to the Committee from banking experts Andrew Body and Simon Jensen provides fresh evidence of these costs. Their analysis shows the Reserve Bank’s capital rules add between 0.25 and 0.375 percentage points to mortgage rates compared with Australia. For a million-dollar mortgage, that means between $2,500 and $3,750 in […]
Today on the MR Podcast Tyler and I discuss the “New Monetary Economics”. Here’s the opening TABARROK: Today we’re going to be talking about the new monetary economics. Now, perhaps the first thing to say is that it’s not new anymore. The new monetary economics refers to a set of claims and ideas about monetary economics […]
The prediction of inflation dynamics—how prices change over time—has increasingly confounded modern macroeconomists. Throughout much of the twentieth century, there seemed to be clear relationships linking the money supply, economic slack, and price levels. Monetarism, the school of thought that posits a stable connection between the growth rate of a money aggregate and the subsequent […]
A group of economists have written to Nicola Willis complaining about the modest fiscal restraint imposed on the public sector. Grant Robertson grew government expenditure by $76 billion/year or a massive 7.6% of GDP, leaving NZ with a structural deficit. Many were champions of his policies or worked for him, and now they complain his […]
On the last day of 1945, with World War II finally behind it, Finland’s government announced a new and very strange policy.All Finns were required to take out a pair of scissors and snip their banknotes in half. This was known in Finland as setelinleikkaus, or banknote cutting. Anyone who owned any of the three…
By Paul Homewood So much for the Bank’s much vaunted independence! Rachel Reeves is planning to make the Bank of England take climate change as seriously as growth, as the Chancellor seeks to use her maiden Budget to overhaul the economy. In a letter to Governor Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, Ms Reeves is […]
In the past few hours, it has been stated that the US economy grew at a solid 3% rate last quarter, as given in the American government’s final estimate. New Zealand’s economy, on the other hand, shrank at a rate of -0.2%. The US Federal Funds rate (the equivalent of NZ’s Official Cash Rate, OCR)…
When rates go low, future profits go high. Everyone wants a cutBy Richard B. McKenzie. Excerpt:”Profits in the future, dollar for dollar, are worth less than current dollars. This is because current profits can earn interest between now and the future, which means that future profits must be discounted by some percentage to make them…
Over the last few years, The Treasury seems to have been toying with bidding for a more significant role for fiscal policy as a countercyclical stabilisation tool It seemed to start when Covid hubris still held sway – didn’t we do well? – and the first we saw of it in public was at a […]
Who is advising this woman? In what universe do they think she can say this and at the same time fool enough voters that she hasn’t been part of the Biden Administration that has had these price hikes happen on their watch, on her watch. Did they not think that Trump’s campaign would run with […]
Exchange-rate models fit very well for the U.S. dollar in the 21st century. A “standard” model that includes real interest rates and a measure of expected inflation for the U.S. and the foreign country, the U.S. comprehensive trade balance, and measures of global risk and liquidity demand is well-supported in the data for the U.S. […]
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level has been percolating among monetary theorists for over three decades: Eric Leeper being the first to offer a formalization of the idea, with Chris Sims and Michael Woodford soon contributed to its further development. But the underlying idea that the taxation power of the state is essential for […]
I picked up The Post this morning to find the lead story headlined “Recession hits homes harder than businesses”, reporting a speech given earlier this week by Treasury’s deputy secretary and chief economic adviser Dominick Stephens. There was an account of the same speech, but with some different material, on BusinessDesk a couple of days […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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