By Roger E. A. Farmer

According to a widely-held consensus view, the world is slowly emerging from the Great Recession of 2008. Growth in China is projected to top 8 per cent in 2009. Australia raised the interest rate on the Australian dollar last week and the US and UK economies are showing signs that unemployment growth has slowed even though the unemployment rates in both countries are very high. Sometime soon, perhaps in the spring of 2010, perhaps earlier, the Fed, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England are likely to respond to the perceived global recovery by reducing the sizes of their balance sheets and raising interest rates on overnight loans. Continue reading "Don’t give up on quantitative easing: We can have our cake and eat it too"

By Andrew Sheng and Michael Pomerleano

The national authorities and the international community should be commended for the speed of action taken to stop the spread of the financial crisis. To protect the financial system from the deflation in asset bubbles, the public sector has essentially guaranteed all deposits, rescued systemically important institutions, made large liquidity injections and brought interest rates to zero or near zero under a zero interest rate policy. Almost all systemically important central banks entered into ZIRP under emergency conditions at the same time.

But the polices adopted to combat the crisis are creating their own problems. In the medium term, the treatment may be as expensive as the crisis.

Continue reading "Zero interest rate policy: Treatment may be as expensive as the crisis"

By Eswar Prasad

The financial crisis has taught us a painful lesson that global macroeconomic imbalances can wreak enormous damage on the world economy. Indeed, the centrepiece of the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh was agreement on a framework for balanced and sustainable growth to forestall a resurgence of imbalances as the economic recovery gets underway. At the recent IMF-World Bank annual meetings, G20 leaders gave the IMF a mandate to manage this framework by providing hard-nosed evaluations of their countries’ macroeconomic policies. Continue reading "Global macroeconomic imbalances: G20 leaders must back up their rhetoric with deeds"

“Our unprecedented, decisive and concerted policy action has helped to arrest the decline and boost global demand.” Thus did the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 leading high-income and emerging economies pat themselves on the back over the weekend. They were right. The response to the crisis was both essential and successful. But it is still too early to declare victory.

Continue reading "Why it is still too early to start withdrawing stimulus"

By Willem Buiter

Lord Turner, chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, has set the cat among the financial pigeons by making highly critical comments about the City of London and financial intermediation in general. He recommended some drastic remedies, and suggested considering a global tax on financial transactions – a generalised Tobin tax. James Tobin proposed a tax on foreign exchange transactions to stabilise floating exchange rates and achieve greater national monetary policy autonomy in a world of increasing financial integration.

Continue reading "Forget Tobin tax: there is a better way to curb finance"

By Yu Yongding

China has rebounded from the global slump with vigour. In the second quarter, its official figures showed year-on-year gross domestic product growth of 7.9 per cent. Those who doubt the quality of China’s macroeconomic statistics can check its physical statistics: in June, electricity production increased 5.2 per cent, reversing the falls of the previous eight months. It is almost certain that China’s GDP will grow more than 8 per cent this year. Continue reading "China’s stimulus shows the problem of success"

By Ricardo Caballero

Perhaps one of the economic phenomena most akin to witch-hunting is the diagnostic and policy response that develops during the recovery phase of a financial crisis.  Understandably, pressured politicians and policymakers rush to find culprits and sources of instant gratification. All too often they find a ready supply of these in preconceptions and superficial analyses of correlations.  This time around the scapegoats are global imbalances and leverage. Continue reading "Economic witch-hunting"

Proposals for reform of financial regulation are now everywhere. The most significant have come from the US, where President Barack Obama’s administration last week put forward a comprehensive, albeit timid, set of ideas. But will such proposals make the system less crisis-prone? My answer is, no. The reason for my pessimism is that the crisis has exacerbated the sector’s weaknesses. It is unlikely that envisaged reforms will offset this danger. Continue reading "Reform of regulation has to start by altering incentives"