{"id":35027,"date":"2018-06-12T08:23:04","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T13:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35027"},"modified":"2018-06-12T08:23:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T13:23:04","slug":"central-banking-its-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35027","title":{"rendered":"Central Banking: It’s Alive!!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CENTRAL BANKING: IT\u2019S ALIVE!!<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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In his recent posting on Linked In, entitled, \u2018The death of macro-prudential\u2019<\/em><\/a>, Stuart Trow of the EBRD delivered a well-aimed broadside at the pitiable conduct of the Bank of England and elaborated on some of the malign consequences of its catalogue of errors. Without wishing to single him out unduly for criticism for a piece with whose broad outlines I concur,\u00a0 I see it as a prime example of where even those who are\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0wholly in thrall to the cult of \u2018Whatever it Takes\u2019 often miss the critical features of that cult\u2019s essential evil.<\/span>\u00a0Left unaddressed, therefore, I fear this lack can only leave the intellectual soil fertile for a continued harvest of malign outcomes on the part of our clay-footed idols in the central banks.<\/p>\n

Where better to start than with the following bold assertion of the author, viz., that\u00a0\u2018\u2026if only policymakers had been allowed to exercise their judgement, crises could have been anticipated and avoided\u2026\u2019?<\/em><\/p>\n

In my eyes, that heroic presumption of policymakers\u2019 qualities of \u2018judgement\u2019 almost vitiates the argument from the off. Irrespective of whether one can be persuaded that Mario Draghi, Jerome Powell, Divus Marcus Carney and the like are the most intelligent, most far-sighted \u2013 most impartially\u00a0Olympian<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 beings on the planet, the reality is that neither their fervid number-crunching of rows of abstracted, statistical time-series nor the GIGO output of their horribly over-specified macroeconomic \u2018models\u2019 can possibly substitute for the particular judgement and uniquely individual preferences of untold millions of men and women interacting, every minute of every day, every\u00a0where<\/em>\u00a0in the market.<\/p>\n

No, the best the central bankers can hope to achieve \u2013 in finest Hippocratic fashion \u2013 is that their own meddling does not send too any wrong signals, conjure up too many wrong incentives, or encourage too many, ultimately self-defeating behaviours among the innocent millions over whom they have been almost divinely-appointed to hold sway and over whom they hold seemingly limitless power.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CENTRAL BANKING: IT\u2019S ALIVE!! In his recent posting on Linked In, entitled, \u2018The death of macro-prudential\u2019, Stuart Trow of the EBRD delivered a well-aimed broadside at the pitiable conduct of the Bank of England and elaborated on some of the malign consequences of its catalogue of errors. Without wishing to single him out unduly for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[56,124,7380,16888,1044,995,17261,20487],"class_list":["post-35027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bank-of-england","tag-central-banks","tag-cobden-centre","tag-jerome-powell","tag-mario-draghi","tag-mark-carney","tag-sean-corrigan","tag-stuart-trow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35028,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35027\/revisions\/35028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}