There is much that is troubling about George Osborne’s proposal to oblige future governments to run a budget surplus in normal times. There is the small matter of identifying “normal” times. It implies something important about how one is thinking about the macreconomy. What does “normal” look like? […]
A bunch of statistics about the housing market have been published over the last few days. Housing issues have been hitting the headlines in the mainstream media harder than is usually the case. A number of the key pressure groups have made the point forceful that current developments […]
Mark Carney’s importation of the forward guidance approach has been all over the mainstream and social media. But how significant is the announcement that the Bank of England is planning on keeping nominal interest rates as they are until after the next General Election? The comment it has […]
In 1930 Keynes wrote his famous essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. In the essay he made a range of predictions about what the world would be like a hundred years hence. At the heart of the exercise was the impact of increasing productivity and rates of economic […]
The debate over the future organisation and operation of the banking industry seems to have spluttered back into life. Just before Christmas the first report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards made its appearance. The report focused on structures. Its most eye-catching and newsworthy recommendation was that […]
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