Central banks continue to be obsessed with inflation. Current monetary policy is like the behaviour of a reckless driver running at 200 miles per hour, looking at the rear-view mirror and thinking “we have not crashed yet, let’s accelerate”.
Central banks believe that there is no risk in current monetary policy based on two wrong ideas: 1) That there is no inflation, according to them, and 2) that benefits outstrip risks.
Continue reading Inflation Is Not A Social PolicyThe United States election campaign is focused primarily on how much will the next president spend and the measures to combat coronavirus. Both issues should point to one conclusion: Unlike what candidate Biden wants to do, the next United States president should not copy the European Union.
As we face a second wave of coronavirus outbreak in Europe, we know that the March measures and aggressive lockdowns were a grave mistake.
The European economy is on the verge of a double-dip recession, the unemployment rate is at 8.1% compared to 7.8% in the United States but the European Union still has around 10 million furloughed jobs. Real unemployment, if we use the same calculation as in the United States, is closer to 11%.
Continue reading United States Elections: The Risk of Copying Europe
The main central banks have been discussing the idea of implementing a digital currency. The rationale behind it escapes many citizens. Most transactions in the main global currencies are conducted digitally and one could say that the largest and most traded currencies, the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, British Pound, Swiss Franc, and the Yuan are already functioning as mostly digital money.
So, what are central banks saying when they talk about a new and different digital currency? It is basically another step in the effort to gradually get rid of physical currencies, with an idea of strengthening control of the payments and make it simpler to trace the use of a particular means of payment. It is also aimed at competing with global cryptocurrencies. Most will state that the reasons behind the idea of a central bank digital currency are efficiency and improving the transmission mechanism of monetary policy.
Continue reading Central Bank Digital Currency, A Growth Or Financial Repression Tool?
In an article published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB states that governments taking more debt now should not be a concern, and would strengthen the central bank independence in the future.
She claims that “the decisive fiscal policy intervention in the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis strengthens the effectiveness of monetary policy and mitigates the long-term costs of the pandemic. With targeted, forward-looking investment, not least under the umbrella of the EU Recovery Fund, governments can foster sustainable growth, increase long-term competitiveness and facilitate the necessary reduction of the debt ratio once the crisis has been overcome”.
Continue reading No. More Debt Is Not The Answer