From Northern Rock to lunch tables, no one is immune from the herd mentality
The Bank of England and Federal Reserve held a two-day conference last week in London on big data and machine learning. All very interesting stuff. There was an intriguing vignette as we emerged from the conference room for the frugal lunch on the first day. Straight ahead was a table with sandwiches, fruit and the […]
At long last, economists appreciate that private debt was the catalyst for the crisis
This month saw the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a collapse which precipitated one of the only two global financial crises of the past 150 years. The late 2000s and early 1930s were the only periods in time when capitalism itself has trembled on the edge of the precipice. It was in […]
The Bank of England’s own data negates Carney’s overhyped house price warning
No one can tell them quite like Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. He appears to have briefed the cabinet last week that house prices could fall by 35 per cent in the event of a no-deal Brexit. To be fair, the Bank did try to qualify this figure by saying that […]
It’s time to question the macroeconomic orthodoxy on interest rates and inflation
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, is getting his retaliation in early. Faced yet again with the Bank failing to deliver its designated target of a two per cent inflation rate, in a speech last week he suggested that his remit was broader. “We face a tradeoff between having inflation above target and […]
