which may confuse some people, but shouldn’t. Here is the graph of the June Gilt future since March: As this story indicates, yields are now at a very low level. Good news? Well, no. A naive, political interpretation of this would be: the Conservative government has impressed the market that it has borrowing under control. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Inflation’
19 May
Defending the Bank of England
It is looking pretty dicey for the Bank and it’s inflation-fighting reputation. Read Jeremy Warner (Does the inflation target actually mean anything any more?) and above all the point made clear in Simon Ward’s post yesterday (UK CPI inflation 3 percentage points above BoE year-ago forecast). Here is a graph from last year’s May Inflation [...]
18 May
I won’t deny it: the inflation figures suck
Here is the BBC story; here is where you can get the data. The BBC mentions volcanic ash driving up Food prices. But as far as I can see, the things that rose hardest from March to April were not particularly vulnerable to delayed flights: (correct me if I am wrong: I did that graph [...]
20 Apr
Three more views on inflation
Stephanie Flanders has a long discussion of how much of a shock it is. Simon Ward is (typically) hawish, calling for more rate hikes. But the most interesting view comes from an unpublished private note from Jamie Dannhauser of Lombard, who urges people not to be fooled by the shock, and identifies one-offs like the [...]
30 Mar
Disinflation, narrow banking, stuff
Just to keep the world up to date with, you know, stuff: Economist’s View: nothing but disinflation in the US Krugman disses John Kay’s regular suggestion of Narrow Banking as the answer. Without namechecking Kay. Chris Giles finds the Chancellors’ Debate a ‘depressing consensus’. Whereas Bagehot thinks they were a good thing for democracy. Paul [...]
25 Mar
Two pieces I’d wished I’d written
Together, they make the arguments for Credit Where It’s Due far better than I managed. The arguments being: don’t worry about inflation right now, and a nominal growth target is superior. First Hat Tip to Luis commenting here, for the link to this blogpost: “Target the Cause not the Symptom“. It is worth reading twice [...]
23 Mar
Ed Conway’s thoughts on nominal GDP growth targets
can be found here. He mentions yours truly, but expands on the pros and cons to a degree I have not yet managed: [Wilkes] suggests, among other things, that the Bank start targeting nominal economic growth (in other words GDP as we know it plus inflation). It is an intriguing idea: the Bank’s CPI target is [...]
17 Mar
Oh sterling doommongers, where are ye?
Remember those hazy days at the beginning of March? It was obvious, innit: a hung parliament spells doom to the pound. Since then, the possibility of a hung parliament has remained just as strong (see Betfair) and yet the Pound is up. From the $1.50 level to $1.54. Nothing spectacular: just enough to confirm my [...]
25 Feb
You can tell things are going downhill when ….
Jeremy Warner of the Telegraph is berating the heir-presumptive of the ECB, Axel Weber, for being anti-inflation: Yet it is plainly better to be attempting to choke off an inflationary boom than to be in a Depression wondering how to get out. In a deflationary debt spiral, monetary policy becomes almost wholly impotent. However low [...]
23 Feb
More Robin Hood
How the Robin Hood Tax campaign is wrong; how inflation might make a fool of me; how it could not make me as wrong as Brad DeLong makes John Cochrane.
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