I was asked by a commentator earlier today if I could provide a schedule as to when posts might be published here, and when moderation might take place. I suspect that this was in part because more there were than 40 unmoderated comments by 14.45 this afternoon.
Unfortunately, I can't provide that schedule. My explanation was as follows:
Blogs almost invariably come out between 7 and nine in the morning, although a few might get added later.
Moderation is utterly unpredictable and depends on what is happening. Today I have, so far:
– Published four posts
– Recorded 5 videos
– Written a 1,000 word article for The National
– Done a 30 minute podcast/video for Politics Joe
– Moderated 40 comments here, so far
– Text edited two videos
– Had three significant phone calls
– Had a 25 minute snoozeThings have to fit in as they do.
Many more comments have been moderated now.
This is the fifth post of the day.
Very shortly I will be back on editing.
And this is a quiet day, with no appointments. Moderation will probably happen until 9 tonight. I usually cover 14 hours a day, but blog and moderation activity fits around life and other work, and cannot rule either without it becoming burdensome. I hope you understand.
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more self indulgence..its just embarrassing
What is really amusing is the number of anmes under which you appear here – I have just found four.
When it comes to self indulgence, isn’t having that many identities the clearest indication of a sufferer?
What is embarrassing is you posting something so egregiously pointless, beyond being plain rude. Oh, no! Not embarrassing at all , because you are too craven a snivelling troll to post under your full name.
Hi Richard. A word in support of this website/forum of yours. In my experience, “moderation” on other sites equates to a binary choice: publish/not publish with no immediate explanation to the interlocutor. On your site, in contrast, “moderation” equates to reasoned engagement with all but the most obtuse, or evident trolls. KBO.
Thanks
Thank you.
But there was zero criticism or complaint intended – in fact I wondered if some clarity might prevent some unwarranted complaints and encourage patience from us all, me included.
As for g****m and his aliases, can you do IP address and device ID/MAC blocks?
It’s so long since I ran my own sites I’ve forgotten how, and I’m v out of date anyway. I had fun sending corporate, local and national gov snoops to their own landing pages using IP data and little bits of script back in the noughties.
I could never quite see why city companies, other police forces and the MOD, wanted to visit the web sites of a provincial church, and a foodbank – and I didn’t want covert keylogging software being sent to me from Singapore-dwelling CEOs either. That would have been very bad (f)horm indeed.
Trolls don’t like daylight.
I can block emails and urls. His url is now blocked.
Richard I worry that burnout might happen
I take plenty of time out.
I work at what I want to do now.
Richard, do you know where the “full funding rule” is written in primary or secondary legislation?
I refer to the text in the Debt Management Office Remit, section 2.13 The full funding rule, in https://www.dmo.gov.uk/media/4kihuxsy/drmr2425.pdf
If that rule was suspended and the DMO issues department was shut down for a while; Gilt redemptions continuing; the Bond vigilantes and defined benefit pension funds, would be desperate for product. Gilt prices would go up and yields would drop. The BoE wouldn’t know if its monetary policy was on its arse or its elbow. None of which would effect the government’s ability to create and spend its own currency.
Candidly, I do not know.
You’ll find some discussion on the Full Funding Rule in:
“APPENDIX 7: Supplementary memorandum by Lombard Street Research Ltd”
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmtreasy/154/154ap08.htm
And a deeper dive in:
“The self-financing state: An institutional analysis of government expenditure, revenue collection and debt issuance operations in the United Kingdom”
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/bartlett_public_purpose/files/the_self-financing_state_an_institutional_analysis_of_government_expenditure_revenue_collection_and_debt_issuance_operations_in_the_united_kingdom.pdf
Thanks
Thanks acorn, I had wondered about the ‘provenance’ of the ‘full funding rule’
I should have asked on here years ago!
Thanks Ian Tresman.
that link to
“APPENDIX 7” of
“Treasury – Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence”
from page 219
“Supplementary memorandum by Lombard Street Research Ltd”
contains this clear understanding of history:
“At the end of the 1980s the application of the full funding rule led to a particularly misguided episode in monetary policy. The boom of the three years from mid-1986 to mid-1989 strengthened tax revenues and led to a significant budget surplus in 1989 and 1990. In the 12 months to March 1990 the public sector borrowing requirement was negative by £8.0 billion. By itself, a surplus of this kind would reduce the quantity of money, as people and companies in the non-bank private sector would be making more payments to the government than they were receiving. (This would of course reduce their bank deposits.) In the circumstances the contractionary monetary effect would be desirable because it would offset expansionary forces on aggregate demand. Indeed, the tendencies for budget surpluses to emerge in booms and for such surpluses to lower the money stock are two key “automatic stabilizers” which dampen fluctuations in economic activity.
The “reverse gilt auctions” of the late 1980s: increasing the quantity of money in a boom
However, the Government had not only adopted the full funding rule in 1985, but had also been persuaded that the rule should be pursued at all points in the business cycle. It therefore organised debt management operations to neutralise entirely the contractionary effect of the budget surplus on the money stock. It embarked on a series of “reverse gilt auctions”, whereby the sums of money generated by the surplus were used to buy back medium- and long-dated gilt-edged securities from non-banks, principally financial institutions such as life insurance companies. The effect of the reverse gilt auctions was of course to increase these institutions’ bank deposits and the money stock. As a result, they had excess liquidity and were keen to buy assets, supporting share prices and commercial property values.
This was totally inappropriate for the British economy in 1989 and 1990. Excess demand in the domestic economy coincided with rising commodity prices due to a fairly strong world economy. The overriding need was for a tightening, not an easing of monetary policy. The Government’s one remaining instrument for curbing inflation was the short-term interest rate, an approach compared at the time to playing a game of golf with a single club. Because debt management operations were acting to boost the money supply and so to perpetuate the boom, the one club of short-term interest rates had to do too much work. Clearing bank base rates soared from 7 ½ per cent in May 1988 to 12 per cent in late August 1988 and 15 per cent in September 1989. They stayed there for over a year and remained above 10 per cent until September 1992. This period of high interest rates was devastating for the home-owners who had borrowed so heavily in 1987 and early 1988, and also for many newly-formed small businesses dependent on bank credit. It is very striking that the 15 per cent interest rates which prevailed in the worst phase were not much different from the 17 per cent interest rates in the previous recession of 1980, but inflation expectations were very much lower in 1990 than they had been 10 years earlier. Short-term interest rates had to be particularly fierce in real terms, because their deflationary impact was being negated by the money injections from the reverse gilt auctions.”
And this clear analysis of the resultant consequences.
“More generally, the application of the full funding rule increased money growth in a booming economy, while its application in a depressed economy would reduce money growth. The full funding rule was therefore perverse in its impact on the business cycle. By contrast, a policy of over-funding in a boom reduces money growth and restrains demand, and of under-funding in a recession increases money growth and stimulates demand. The full funding rule was concocted by a handful of civil servants in the Treasury in the mid-1980s; it had appeared in no earlier recognised manual of public finance and had no historical precedent in British debt management praxis. The disasters of 1989 and 1990 show that debt management operations and short-term interest rates must work in harmony. They should be seen as two partners in the conduct of a well-organised and cohesive monetary policy. Institutions need to be designed which ensure that in future this integration occurs as a matter of course.”
It appears as if the Treasury has been refusing to learn since at least Spring 2000. 🙁
Thanks
Fascinating
Ah, one realises belatedly that one can’t post the conclusion as a follow-on reply to a post, until that post has been accepted through moderation.
An oversight on my part.
One ought be aware in future that splitting wall-of-text posts into pieces will increase moderation delay and effort.
The concluding paragraphs, still pertinent 25 years later:
The Treasury made a bad mistake by introducing the full funding rule in 1985. The rule must carry a fair share of the blame for the macroeconomic catastrophes of the following seven years, which culminated in the UK’s humiliating expulsion from the European exchange rate mechanism. Macroeconomic policy was better in the years after 1992, with improved co-ordination between the Treasury and the Bank, and the gradual de-politicisation of policy-making. But it now appears that the Treasury’s rivalry with the Bank of England has resurfaced, with the creation of the DMO and the explicit rejection of a monetary policy role for debt management. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that:
1. debt management decisions always have monetary consequences and should therefore always be seen as part of monetary policy, and
2. monetary policy will be better organised if the Bank of England and the DMO work together than if the Bank’s interest rate decisions and the DMO’s operations are at cross purposes.
The UK Treasury may draw some comfort from the US Treasury’s decision last year to carry out bond buy-backs highly reminiscent of the reverse gilt auctions at the end of the Lawson boom. A fair comment is that—at the start of the new millennium—the finance ministries of the two leading English-speaking nations do not understand the basics of either debt management or monetary policy. In May 1997 Mr Brown wisely gave the job of determining sterling interest rates to the Bank of England; he might ask himself why he thought the Treasury deserved to retain the job of debt management.
In the last 15 years the Treasury’s attempt to sever debt management from monetary policy has—from time to time—led to serious policy mistakes. If similar mistakes are made in future, the Treasury and its ministers will deserve all the criticism they receive.
Much to agree with
You hope we understand? Richard this is your blog, whose primary purpose is to publish your thoughts on issues. The fact that you allow other people to contribute is your choice; when you have the time to moderate posts they will appear (or not). When that happens must depend on your commitments and not on our convenience.
Thank you for all that you do.
Thanks
Richard
People have to remember that you do this by yourself, you don’t have a team of moderators. If they can not accept a delay because you are doing several other things that day, then that is their problem not yours.
You are right: there is no assistant on the blog.