monetary policy

I was in Cannes with CLC President Ken Georgetti for the G20 Labour Summit. If the outcome of the G20 disappoints, it was not because of lack of effort from the international labour movement.

So, the 2 per cent inflation target has been renewed as it now stands. (Take that, House of Commons Finance Committee, which is holding hearings on the issue next week.)

Governments around the world are heading down a path to economic suicide. So said Nobel Prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, to hundreds of well-heeled financiers.

The Euro deal at least averted an immediate banking crisis and induced temporary market euphoria, but it is not going to provide a lasting solution to the Euro sovereign debt crisis.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's op ed in the Globe and Mail yesterday on his hopes for the Cannes summit is disappointing, even if the content comes as no surprise.

How to reconcile what we know happened in 1920s Germany (money printing, hyperinflation), with MMT views? After all, MMT theorists tend to downplay worries about "money printing."

While Modern Monetary Theory deals with the details of monetary and fiscal matters, the implications of its analysis are much broader, especially in current political times.

Once we start talking about "printing money," the danger is that misunderstandings about what money is get amplified. It is the belief that a colourful piece of paper has a certain value that matters.

I am concerned that too many of us are willing to play in the frame, the box, the straightjacket of modern discourse about fiscal and monetary policy.

Less than a month ago, the C. D. Howe Institute released Michael Parkin's paper, "Overnight Moves: The Bank of Canada Should Start to Raise Interest Rates Now."