Archive

Fed to the Rescue?

I interviewed Victor Shih, political scientist at Northwestern, at INET’s Bretton Woods conference earlier this year.

INET is all about thinking new things, and indeed academia is supposed to inspire great thoughts.

Grand Bargain at last?

As part of the tremendous promotion campaign for the 8th edition of his textbook Economics, Samuelson was devoted a feature in the New York Times (February 5, 1970, p. 41).

Paul Samuelson was notorious for many things, but also, like Marshall, for spending most of his academic life in the same institution.

Alchemy or Banking?

Two FT pieces by Tracy Alloway caught my eye this week: this article from Tuesday’s print edition, and this post on Alphaville today.

Two things seem to be taken for granted in the current debt-ceiling debate: 1. The parties will come to an agreement on the debt ceiling because 2. These United States have never defaulted and will not start now.

Mention the government and the market and all academic reflection and civilized discussion dissolves into heated monologues. Politicians are an extreme case.

A Monetary Rorschach Test

Last time, I looked at the Chinese property market. The last link in that chain of financial interlinkages is the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank.

You would have thought that to be a “jazz economist” was a good thing. I first imagined a “cool cat” that would entrance the hearts and minds of the populace. Not so.

So, how hard is it to write the history of exceptional figures? Shall we buy film cameras?

The view from BIS