In a speech entitled "How low can you go" to the Portadown Chamber of Commerce the Bank of England's Chief Economist Andy Haldane has looked at ways that central banks could basically get us to spend a bit more and therefore boost a flagging economy LINK1. I am not at all happy with the attitude of central bankers these days, they think that keeping real interest rates low and printing money out of thin air helps the economy - well I have news for them it does not. It undermines confidence in the currency and by artificially inflating housing and stockmarkets distorts the economy and the income and wealth distributions in favour of the rich. Haldane thinks we will be stuck at or close to the zero lower bound (ZLB) for some time as the global economy is in a critical state.
What is worrying is he is thinking we may need to have negative real interest rates in the future this can be achieved by (1) raising the inflation target from 2% to 4% this would make real interest rates negative (2) Making some banknotes invalid for example it they have certain serial numbers (3) Switching to digital money that can then have a negative interest rate applied by the central bank (i.e. they the central bank just take some money out of you digital wallet). All of these ideas are barmy !!!! We do not need negative real interest rates, we need positive real interest rate so that savers are rewarded and investors make wise decisions which they do not do when interest rates are artificially low.
It is the job of central bankers to provide confidence in the currency not to tell the public how central bankers might steal your money or reduce its purchasing power through inflation or actually take it from your digital wallet. Market economies do not need central bankers arbitrarily distorting them or stealing peoples money, that does not stimulate the economy it depresses it and creates unnecessary uncertainty. I think with this speech we can safely rule out Haldane as a future central bank governor - this speech will come back to haunt him for years to come.
What is worrying is he is thinking we may need to have negative real interest rates in the future this can be achieved by (1) raising the inflation target from 2% to 4% this would make real interest rates negative (2) Making some banknotes invalid for example it they have certain serial numbers (3) Switching to digital money that can then have a negative interest rate applied by the central bank (i.e. they the central bank just take some money out of you digital wallet). All of these ideas are barmy !!!! We do not need negative real interest rates, we need positive real interest rate so that savers are rewarded and investors make wise decisions which they do not do when interest rates are artificially low.
It is the job of central bankers to provide confidence in the currency not to tell the public how central bankers might steal your money or reduce its purchasing power through inflation or actually take it from your digital wallet. Market economies do not need central bankers arbitrarily distorting them or stealing peoples money, that does not stimulate the economy it depresses it and creates unnecessary uncertainty. I think with this speech we can safely rule out Haldane as a future central bank governor - this speech will come back to haunt him for years to come.
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