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Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

This is my kind of macroeconomics:

The abstract says:

The case for central bank independence is built on an intellectual two-step. Step one argues there is a problem of inflation prone government. Step two argues independence is the solution to that problem. This paper challenges that case and shows it is based on false politics and economics. The paper argues central bank independence is a product of neoliberal economics and aims to institutionalize neoliberal interests.

Of course Snippa won’t like it.

The actual aim of central bank independence being to stop politicians inflating the hell out of the money supply as Snippa wants to do.

Not that that’s neoliberal, it’s just a rational constraint on the excesses which public choice economics leaves us prey to.

49 thoughts on “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

  1. ‘neoliberal’ in the Murphy Lexicon means ‘evil’ but I think it means someone who prioritises the influence of capital over Labour and who believes in unrestricted markets as a paradigm.

    In practice it’s become a generic term of abuse which is used commonly by utterly ignorant people who have no understanding of economics and business …

  2. Of course, if you get Mark Carnage running the central bank then control of the money supply goes right out of the door and off the planet. A good idea but not one that works in practise

  3. ‘Nother way of looking at it, of course, is that central bank independence removes a whole slice of economic management from democratic control. Yep, governments can print money & cause inflation. And the electorate can punish them for it.
    But just because central banks are independent doesn’t mean they have the interests of the public at heart. I give you Mark Carney, who seems to have interests totally divorced from the interests of the public at heart. Like the BoE’s Project Fear propaganda campaign, been going on the past 4 years. How do you vote Mark Carney out?

  4. Quite and who has been bitching about Carney non stop …the Brexit crew –
    If we could only take fiscal Policy out of the hands of domestic politicians it would be much better
    It is , and always has been like leaving dogs in charge of sausages and Boris Johnson is the fattest nastiest greediest fiscally abusive PM we have ever had.

  5. Mr Carnage has made a fortune for wealthy asset speculators. Not so good for pensioners drawing income or trying to build a fund though, is he?

    His forward guidance is such a joke. In any reasonable country he would have been sacked for basic ineptitude

  6. Newmania: surely the most financially abusive PM was Wilson and/or Callahan. The UK had to suspend trading of GBP and go to the IMF for a load. Inflation reached at least 23% IIRC.

  7. Boris Johnson is the fattest nastiest greediest fiscally abusive PM we have ever had.

    When was the last budget under his premiership?

  8. Be careful, svs & Rob. Both of those were before the independence of the BoE. Independence brought us…. 2008.
    Didn’t they do well?

  9. @ bis
    Arguably 2008 was a consequence of transferring responsibility for oversight of the banking system from the BoE to the Financial Services Authority.
    There hadn’t been a bank run in over a century under BoE supervision – it took only half-a-dozen years under the FSA.
    Another piece of Brown brilliance.

  10. Newmania – You cyberstalking John Redwood again?

    I am receiving too many contributions from the same blogger and too many long contributions. As you can see the numbers have escalated sharply recently. I will have to delete more if from the same person each day or if they are long. Please send me your best single contribution each day and keep it to around a paragraph, unless you have researched argument which is new. I am very busy with many matters of national policy and in the constituency.

  11. PS – is there anywhere on t’internet that has *good* coverage of Brexit? The circus of last week showed that Parliament isn’t the only failed institution that’s past its sell-by date.

    All the newspapers are abominable, Guido has some decent scoops but little analysis, ConHome is like a retirement home for incontinent Remainers, and the Brexit Party’s agitprop isn’t enlightening. Is anyone in Britain actually:

    * Properly informed; and
    * Thinking through the next steps; and
    * Writing about it?

  12. The reason I’m not writing about it is because I’ve no clue.

    Enough perhaps to do something for an American paper (just have done) but not something knowledgeable enough to place before you aficionados……

  13. Tim – it’s unfortunate you don’t have a twin brother based in London and covering the SW1 beat, my gast really is flabbered by how badly the UK media are failing on Brexit.

    It’s all propagandist wishcasting, breathless regurgitation of rumours, or soap opera style focus on personalities.

    The left-wing press shat its trousers in 2016 and hasn’t recovered, but the right-wing isn’t much better (if I read another outrage-clickbait about BETRAYAL MOST FOUL, I might actually go clinically fed-up).

    Feels like everyone’s busking it. You’d think that the most important political issue in our generation would be a chance for smarter scribes to shine, but nah.

  14. John Redwoods blog has had some very sensible and informed posts about the parliamentary shenanigans etc the last few months

  15. BniC – I love Sir John, he’s a national treasure. (Interesting to see how recent events have completely vindicated him re: Major, if anything the “bastards” were far too civil to the Currie-fucker)

    He’s good at retrospectively explaining Parliamentary happenings.

    If there’s an actual plan whereby the government can succeed, he’s understandably not sharing it though. (Not sure he’s in the inner circle anyway).

    I’d mainly like to know what the government plans to do to prevent itself from being thrown out by the seemingly inevitable Remainer VONC coup. Looks like a Coalition of the Wankers will seize power as soon as Brenda delivers her speech?

  16. John77/BiS

    I’m not sure about bank runs in the Northern Rock sense but oversight wasn’t what it might have been at the time of Slater Walker and Johnson Matthey Bankers.

    And then there was BCCI. I was working for a commercial bank overseas and we declined to take overnight deposits from BCCI’s local branch because in our estimation they were a dodgy outfit. (The rationale here is that you issue the repayment instructions before you are confirmed in funds so you could find yourself repaying a deposit that had never arrived). When the collapse came it seemed that our branch was cannier than overseers in London.

  17. I was in Hong Kong at the time of BCCI and even where I was working in TEFL and software development there were whispers about their dodgyness

  18. Steve: I’d mainly like to know what the government plans to do to prevent itself from being thrown out by the seemingly inevitable Remainer VONC coup. Looks like a Coalition of the Wankers will seize power as soon as Brenda delivers her speech?

    I think you can be reassured that a VONC will not take place until after Boris Johnson has sent/not sent the letter he’s been told to send and he has until 19th Oct to do so.

    Thereafter upon a VONC he has, under the F-tPA, 14 days in which to shore up his position in parliament. That takes us to 2nd Nov.

    There’s no telling what other mischief MPs couldn’t get up to, of course, including voting against the Queen’s Speech but that would trigger a general election, wouldn’t it?

  19. Could Boris go to to the ECJ and claim as the surrender bill is unlawful in some way as it tries to tie in EU as a whole or some other legal issue. Would be most amusing to see the EU faced with having to rule against the surrender bill, though no doubt they would twist the rules as its in their favour.
    Alternatively as it’s a law specific to one person could go ECHR and claim it breaches his human rights/discriminatory etc.

  20. @Pcar I assume he’s electioneering and playing to the wider audience, so not playing political games over points of protocol etc. looks better with the public and makes the contrast between him and the other parties even more pronounced.
    The timing of Bercows announcement and spending hour and half lauding him shows how far stuck inside the Westminster bubble and obsessed with playing political games they all are.

  21. @john77 @ 5:08
    It’s really the same thing. No democratic control. All decisions made by technocrats. The f****g experts.
    Experts are people you hire when you need them. Fire when they don’t live up to their expertise. Common labourers
    Who got fired over 2008?

  22. Also contrast the debate on the PM breaking a law he hasn’t broken (yet at least) and how important rule of law is etc. with then protesting over prorogued session that the courts have declared is lawful, just looks hypocritical to anyone outside Parliament.

  23. Re: VONC, Al-Beebra agrees with my understanding of it as above

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46890481

    However…

    Could the prime minister refuse to resign?
    If an alternative government is ready to take over, the existing prime minister would be expected to resign. However, there is nothing clearly stated in law that says the prime minister must do so.

    […]

    But such a situation is very unlikely, according to Maddy Thimont-Jack, at the Institute for Government think tank.

    “If there is clearly someone else who could form a majority or has majority support in Parliament, the political pressure would be such that the prime minister would be obliged to resign. It’s an extremely important and established political convention,” she says.

    Would that be like the important and established convention that the Speaker is impartial, laws purporting to affect royal prerogative need Queen’s Consent, and the backbenches don’t get to control the order paper?

    I think we’re beyond constitutional niceties now. So it appears that Boris could hunker down and tell them all to piss off. And why shouldn’t he?

    Has he anything to lose from saying “this is a rogue Parliament and I will only resign if Her Majesty sacks me or the people do via an election”? What are they gonna do – call him a double dog dictator?

  24. Surely BoJo no longer heads the government, and the most pressing problem*.

    He’s the Queen’s first minister, but her cabinet, headed by him, is a nullity. Parliament is now the government. Bercow is the closest thing we have to a prime minister.

    * aside from, yunno, parliamentarians the 1640s would’ve refused to own.

  25. That’s the thing, we have a government that Bercow will not allow to govern, nor will he permit it to call an election. Who led the coup? It’s not the Prime Minister

  26. Edward – I think the Bercow-led shenanigans prove Parliament isn’t able (much less fit) to act in place of the government. Boris isn’t in power, but neither are Bercow, Grieve, Corbyn, et al.

    This obviously can’t go on much longer, but if it gets us to No Deal the drinks are on Steve.

  27. If there were someone capable of gaining the support of parliament for a “government of national unity”, they would already be in place. But there is no such person.

    Corbyn can’t even command the support of his own MPs, and the middle-of-the-road(ish) Remainiacs are either geriatric has-beens or never-weres, equally incapable of gaining majority support. It’s all the the People’s Front of Judea vs the Judean Popular Front.

    There’s clearly a majority in Parliament capable of trying every trick to block no-deal, but no majority behind any viable alternative.

  28. Oh, and Hatty Harpers on being quietly slid into Bercow’s trousers, no doubt as a ‘safe pair of hands’.

    FFS. A more malign influence on public life than hers I’d have found hard to imagine. Prior to this decade.

  29. I was making an unstated (apols) assumption that nobody was going to leap in after a VoNC and come up with an alternative govt and hence the present PM would have a breathing space.

    Whether MPs would “crash in” (©2019 TMB) to a Corbyn regime in order to extend or withdraw Brexit or prevent a general election is something else again, Gawd help us.

  30. They all know there’s an election looming so I reckon the odds of a govt of national unity is slim as it either gives someone an advantage (e.g. Corbyn saying hey look I’m already PM) which the other parties won’t want to hand over or the accusation of selling out (e.g. Corbyn in a Ken Clarke govt. at which point we would have hit peak surreality) which they won’t want thrown at them.
    The best bet would be a short term alliance between booted out conservatives, Lib Dem’s and SNP with labour staying out but promising to vote with them over Brexit without directly taking part. Lib Dem’s seem to believe they will be rewarded for opposing Brexit and oblivious to any downside

  31. Nobody wants to be seen to be in charge whether we leave by default or somehow stay in. In other words we have reached a state known to pure mathematicians as the Bercow optimum.

    Guess who wants to take charge although he has theoretically resigned?

  32. What I don’t understand is why Boris didn’t demand a general election as price for Royal Assent. Or withholding Royal Assent and telling them they can pass their Bill if they win a general election.

    Given the mess, I think most people would see that as constitutionally acceptable in the circumstances. Put it to the people!

  33. Well, Parliament has gone full shouty-crackers Remain.

    So if the extension gambit fails, I fully expect them to VONC and then try to represent themselves as a “government” for just long enough to cancel Brexit. All humbug and bullshit, of course, but they only need to be “the government” for a few days – long enough to control royal prerogative and cancel Art 50.

    Seems he’d be well within his legal rights to barricade the doors to Number 10 and demand an election as his price of resigning. The Queen won’t like it, but she’ll get over it.

    The good thing about them shredding the constitution, parliamentary tradition, and privacy laws is it now appears their only way of getting rid of Boris before the 31st is if he feels obliged to abide by the same conventions they don’t.

    There was an interesting article on ConHome recently claiming the only thing he can do now is resign (conservatives love being noble losers, it’s what gets Peter Hitchens out of bed every morning).

    Luckily, Boris isn’t very conservative.

  34. In theory, he could stay in power not doing anything until another confidence vote was asked for. In Boris shoes, I would enjoy that.

  35. If a group in parliament show that they can command a majority and have a leader, then Brenda would be duty bound to sack Boris and install the majority leader.

    This must still be the case, correct? Brenda appoints the PM, no one else.

    In a saner Britain, she would also have the power to have them all publicly debagged and pelted with rotten veg in a line down the Mall. Commanding the operation would also have been a better use of (pre-woke) Prince Harry’s qualities. His destiny even. We went wrong somewhere.

  36. Bloke in North Dorset

    “In theory, he could stay in power not doing anything until another confidence vote was asked for. In Boris shoes, I would enjoy that.”

    I think it’s safe to say Boris is in office, but not in power “

  37. Labour began to fuck up the position of Speaker with that Scottish wanker, but Bercow dragged it into the gutter. Harman would be a fitting replacement if we were to continue the downward plunge, but it is time for something more radical.

    What that is, I have no idea, but the ideal that there is some non-political force that will fairly control Parliament, in the days of Progressives and Internationalists (win at literally any cost, no shame felt) is a fantasy.

  38. If a group in parliament show that they can command a majority and have a leader, then Brenda would be duty bound to sack Boris and install the majority leader.

    It’s unclear if that’s the case.

    If Boris resigned first, she would be duty bound to ask Mr Corbyn (or whoever) to pop round for tea and sandwiches, but it’s merely implicit – not legally explicit – that a PM in that scenario should resign.

    HM might be forced to sack him, but I reckon she won’t be in a hurry.

    If I were advising Boris, I’d tell him to dig in. Hold on to office at all costs, while loudly demanding his enemies agree to an election. The electorate rewards courage and punishes quitters.

    The rationale he should use is something like:

    “I do not recognise this group of MP’s as a government in waiting. They have shredded every constitutional and Parliamentary norm in their desperation to frustrate the manifesto pledges they were elected to implement. They now have the absolute gall to ask me to adhere to the rules they themselves have trampled on, for the sole purpose of overturning the will of the British people.

    Their purported majority is a cynical pretense, and for that reason I shall not resign until we set up a general election. The people must have their say, not a motley and dishonest collection of rogue MP’s.”

  39. @ TMB
    Quite true (apart from Slater Walker not being a bank, but an “investment bank” like Goldman Sachs), but FSA was far worse.

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