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Old, absurd, and unfit for purpose; how else to describe the “new” monetary framework for euro monetary policy presented by ECB Chief Lagarde amidst much fanfare on Thursday, July 8? Why old? The “new” framework is remarkably similar to that unveiled in May 2003. Why absurd?  The main rationale put forward for the framework is to work around a

Question : Suppose the Fed doubles the supply of ”high-powered money” (monetary base) from around 15 percent to 30 percent of US GDP over a period of less than two years, then announces that the pace of increase will slow to just above zero within the next year providing that the economy remains “on course”; does this amount to a serious

Ryan McMaken (RM): There is a lot of talk these days about the US losing its global monetary hegemony. But a lot needs to happen in terms of unwinding the present system before that can happen. At the heart of this seems to be what you call “globalized money without a global money.” What do you mean by that, and what does it have to do with the

The real drama of default in global markets has not been the federal debt ceiling negotiations in Washington but the write-off by inflation. The issue of whether it turns out that the US Treasury for a few weeks has been slow in servicing its debts—with all delays subsequently rectified—is a sideshow. We could regard this as camouflage for the

“La commedia è finita!” summarizes where the United States and Europe now stand in the Great Phony Postpandemic Disinflation. Why phony? Reported consumer price index (CPI) inflation has been falling in the US and Europe; but this has little to do with the advertised monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB), and Bank

In the laboratory of history, great inflation followed by great disinflation opens the road to monetary regime change. Sometimes the road leads to a better place. Think of the US return to gold in 1879 following the inflationary issue of greenbacks during the Civil War; or the era of the hard deutsche mark when the German Bundesbank responded to

[This article is adapted from  A Guide to Good Money: Beyond the Illusions of Asset Inflation by Brendan Brown and Robert Pringle (2022, Palgrave Macmillan).] Bad money regimes base themselves on a dysfunctional social contract. You, the people, agree to put up with a “moderately good” money in return for us (the regime) providing benefits in

British school children learn about the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which installed without bloodshed a new bill-of-rights respecting monarchy (William and Mary) on the throne in the place of the autocratic short-reigning King James. The Protestant elites feared his dismantling of restrictions on Catholics and his geo-political rapprochement with

The monetary regime in power now—the so-called 2 percent inflation standard—is promising us a “return to normal” after the great pandemic and war inflation of 2021–22. At this time of powerful propaganda—the dismal accompaniment of natural disaster and war—we should be on our guard against such messaging. Even more so when we consider the success

Previous sustained surges in consumer prices – otherwise described as big levies of inflation taxation - have brought in their wake episodes of monetary normalization. These have usually featured a “return to gold” or at least to monetary rules associated with the gold standard. The 2021-2 surge will likely prove an exception thanks in no small