Hjalmar Schacht’s echo – it all feels a lot more like 1932 than 1923
The weekend’s Greek elections brought a neo-nazi party (“Golden Dawn”) into the Greek parliament. The outcome of the Greek elections made me think about the German parliament elections in July 1932...
View ArticleMaybe Jens Weidmann and Francios Hollande should switch jobs
There seem to be two main positions on how to solve the European crisis. One represented by Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann and that is that monetary policy should not be eased anymore and fiscal policy...
View ArticleJens Weidmann, do you remember the second pillar?
Today the ECB is very eager to stress it’s 2% inflation target. However, a couple of years ago the ECB in fact had two targets – the so-called two pillars of monetary policy. The one was the inflation...
View Article“The gold standard remains the best available monetary mechanism”
< UPDATE: See an updated version of this piece here > This is from the Bank of International Settlements third annual report publish in May 1933: “For the Bank for International Settlements, the...
View Article“Meantime people wrangle about fiscal remedies”
The other day I wrote a piece about the risks of introducing politics (particularly fiscal policy) into the central bank’s reaction function. I used the example of the ECB, but now it seems like I...
View ArticleI am sick and tired of hearing about “currency war”– and so is Philipp...
Milton Friedman used to talk about an interest rate fallacy – that people confuse low interest rates with easy monetary policy. However, I believe that we today are facing an even bigger fallacy – the...
View ArticleThe “Weidmann rule” and the asymmetrical budget multiplier (is the euro zone...
During Christmas and New Years I have been able to (nearly) not think about monetary policy and economics, but I nonetheless came across some comments from Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann from last...
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