I was booked to be on Sky News at 7.20 this morning. The booking was made last night and the timing was confirmed late in the evening, as usual. The subject was, of course, the Bank of England's interest rate rises.
At 7 this morning I was cancelled. I was told another story had come up.
It hadn't. Instead, they gave the time to Charles Goodhart, a former Bank of England monetary policy committee member who argued for larger and quicker interest rate rises as if he cannot get to a recession quickly enough.
I would, of course, have argued the exact opposite.
I am told by Sky I will be on again soon.
I will not be changing my mind. Charles Goodhart is totally wrong. And Sky and the people of this country needed the alternative view to that from the Bank of England that we will be hearing all day.
Maybe Sky should be reading the Guardian.
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The only people advocating for a recession are those whose wealth will insulate them from the negative effects and disaster capitalists who exploit crises for personal financial gain. System change is desperately required.
Tha Bank of England’s job is monetary policy, not preventing or causing a recession. That’s the government with its insane array of bans, planning restrictions and protections against sustainable services and goods being produced and traded.
I think the problem you have is an innate aversion to the separation of Powers. You believe in a whole systems approach, some kind of final solution with one institution to rule them all.
Yet time and again countries that integrate religion and politics, judiciary with legislature, police with social work, demanded devolution but voted for centralisation etc turn out to have made errors.
Don’t criticise the BoE for doing their job. Criticise the government if you must.
Wow, that is high order naivety
Satggering
You blaming the BoE for policies causing a recession is like blaming the people who join the Army for causing wars. Sure, a well-motivated volunteer army that is extremely large is going to tempt politicians into using the military in their foreign policy, but that’s still politicians deciding. Giving the sort of people that make up the political class even more power over us is not a good programme.
Sound money and a stable investment climate benefit all of us. The BoE should remain independent at the operational level.
Anyways we may already be in a recession caused by record real negative interest rates which have benefitted the wealthy at the expense of those with less creditworthiness. It could be that cutting rates and going real negative by even more than now is a good idea but we’re not economists, just economic pundits. I’ll stick with the international experts at the ECB, Fed and others that it isn’t.
Even more staggeringly stupid
Generals aren’t warmongers now. Or at least, they have no opinions
Do you have any grasp on reality?
Charlie Bean – ex BoE, as I expect you know – was on R4 ‘Today’. Also justifying rate increases without challenge. The presenters should be reading your material and that in the Guardian, maybe then they could ask some proper questions.
This sort of behaviour tells you all you need to know that there is a conspiracy to lie to the public about these issues and to continue to enable rentiers to make easy money out of society.
It’s gone on for too long.
This disgraceful misinformation of the general public was going on forever. Journalists, politicians, and mainstream economists are given space and time to brainwash uniformed crowds with narratives that benefit the ruling classes.
I wish people of this country would be educated from an early age about how the economy and politics work so they can be easily fooled.
Meanwhile the Sun today lead on the story of the non-entity that is Matt Hancock and his appearance on I’m Not A Celebrity, get me out of here. The £400 grand he is getting for it should help him during these inflationary times.
It’s not like there is anything else going on.
UK braces as biggest interest rate hike in decades expected.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-63431894
He has a big divorce settlement to pay
And three children to out through private schools, I am sure
Stupid man
The UK economy is about to be thrown into a black hole – by its own government by Larry Elliott, The Guardian, Wed 2 Nov 2022:
“If there was really such a thing as a fiscal black hole, it might be a good idea to fill it, but the idea that Britain is about to sucked into a vortex because it is running a budget deficit is a fairytale. A country that has its own currency, as the UK does, can print money to cover its spending. While it is never admitted, the Bank of England’s quantitative easing – large-scale buying of bonds – effectively funded government deficits during both the global financial crisis and the pandemic. There is no black hole because there is no way the government can ever run out of money.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/02/the-uk-economy-is-about-to-be-thrown-into-a-black-hole-by-its-own-government
Richard, forgive me because I’m not a student of economics, I’m trying to get a grip on understanding MMT and I struggle to counter arguments against it
A friend sent me the below. What would your response be?
……..”Printing money causes inflation. MMT assumes that governments have a far greater degree of control over inflation than they actuallt do. Printing money is fine in certain situations but what promoters of MMT seem to ignore is that resources are finite. Where other inputs are scarce or limited, simply printing money is going to cause inflation. Currently – shortage of workers, shortage of energy, more friction in trade – inflation is a risk.
Where there’s slack in the economy I.e. unutilised supply – print away.
Also MMT would involve handing a degree of control of the printing to politicians who are more interested in staying in office than responsible stewardship of the economy.”
I think you have to read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton that answers all these points, off of which are totally false claims about what MMT says
The Deficit Myth is recommended. “Printing money causes inflation” only if the supply of resources (employment, materials, energy) is insufficient. That’s what we see today. Gas supplies are reduced, and the price has increased in order to restrict the amount available. Opec has reduced crude oil output, and the price has sky-rocketed. Consequently, inflation has gone up, and governments have responded by issuing (printing) money to help with fuel bills, Universal Credit, etc. But this is in response to the problem, it is not the cause.
I note that wine consumption has increased by almost 10% since 2019 (probably due to self-medication). It should be obvious that wine consumption was not the cause of inflation, but in response to it. (Ref. https://www.statista.com/statistics/288779/wine-alcohol-clearances-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-annually/ )
Well, whenever I need help with the current political situation, I always look to the red, and I don’t mean the Labour Party 🙂