The Financial Times helps to resurrect an idea that CentreForum was cautiously plugging a year back. A common eurozone bond: would provide more accessibility to the markets, help stabilise the continent’s economies and, most importantly, lower the cost of funding, which in turn would ease the burden on taxpayers.Such a bond would create the scope [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Fiscal Policy’
17 May
Wresting back monetary control, surrendering fiscal
The big headline from Osborne’s first days at the Treasury is his setting up the Office for Budget Responsibility. Stephanie Flanders describes the move here (she adds an observation about Osborne asking Mervyn King for permission to start cutting) and argues that this is not as significant as Brown giving away power over interest rates [...]
16 May
Crazy spending, or our lifeline?
To no great surprise, David Cameron has announced an immediate audit of the ‘crazy’ spending of Labour’s last years in power. Politically, this no doubt makes great sense – “look what those idiots got up to” is perfect scene-setting for the blood-letting that will follow. But what worries me is what sort of a narrative [...]
30 Apr
If the answer is Helicopter Money, how do you sell it?
Like I ranted yesterday, GDP is a very poor way of measuring how certain things are getting better. And my absolutely favourite example is how the Internet has revolutionized the ability to interact with and eavesdrop upon thinkers and teachers – whom one would previously have had to ambush in some University corridor. An example [...]
28 Apr
#bigotgate distracts from important message: IFS very +ve for LibDems
Prior to #bigotgate, I had hoped that the world would tune in, agog, to my take on the IFS’s take on the fiscal situation. Fat chance now. (I think the best observation comes from my favourite tweeter.) Anyway, back to business. You will have read commentary such as this from the Guardian which tends to [...]
27 Apr
Online calculators rule
I’m sure most of you will have already played with the the FT’s online deficit buster. So too has Adam Boulton, but when he asked Mandy to give some of his own brutal preferences, he got a prolonged smackdown, culminating in the undeniable “neither the IFS nor the FT are standing in this election”. The [...]
16 Apr
Martin Wolf hits several nails on the head
In today’s column. Above all, the theme: Growth is what is needed to fix the finances. Then he adds his voice to those arguing against the myth of the spending splurge: the explanation for the sudden explosions in the share of public spending in GDP and the fiscal deficit is not that spending is out [...]
14 Apr
The people have the whiphand. But not in the way the Conservatives would like
In case I have not mentioned it before, I am a liberal. I find the idea of being reliant on the state for my future wellbeing disturbing, and intrinsically unsatisfying. I sort of expect others to feel the same. Whether it comes from the right (see IEA comment thread) or left, I am repelled by [...]
1 Apr
A spreadsheet to confound and ruin your holidays
Here is the spreadsheet. As with so many matters, this started with reading some Dillow post or other. This is like some embarassing instance of an academic expanding 2 lines of poetry into a thesis. But Chris quite casually wrote: And Keynesians would assent, because fiscal policy has little influence on the deficit as spending [...]
Recent Comments