The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
“Act and learn” versus “debate and wait”
By Mohamed El-Erian and Michael Spence
The opinions expressed are their own.
In formulating policy, the process and the mindset can have a significant impact on the success or failure of outcomes. How you do it can be as or more important than what you do.
In today’s western economies, this observation may go a long way in explaining why policy outcomes have consistently fallen short of what policymakers themselves have expected, let alone what is needed to address important and growing economic challenges.
Signs of disappointing policy outcomes are, unfortunately, all around us. Over the last two years, American policymakers have failed miserably to lower persistently high unemployment despite a series of stimulus measures, fiscal and monetary, conventional and unconventional. In Europe, the debt crisis has spread despite numerous summits, declarations, policy actions and political changes.
In both cases, policymakers identified and sometimes mis-identified the problems and took highly publicized steps to solve them. Considerable financial resources and political capital were deployed. The credibility of policymakers (and policymaking itself) was placed on the line. Yet to no avail. The identified problems not only persisted, they deepened.
When one compares policymaking episodes around the world – successful and less so – it seems clear that there is more at play than the content of policies. The mindset of policymakers and the process of policymaking seem to also have a lot to do with the disappointing outcomes. Indeed, one often hears policymakers point to political dysfunctionality as being the major hindrance to good outcomes.
from The Great Debate:
The great global rebalancing and its implications
Manoj Pradhan, left, a global EM economist, is an executive director at Morgan Stanley. Alan M. Taylor, right, a senior advisor at Morgan Stanley, is a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis. The opinions expressed are their own.
Policymakers have fretted about global imbalances for nearly a decade, but little consensus or clarity has emerged. Some saw problems created by surplus countries, others deficit countries. Many feared a fiscal-cum-balance of payments crisis in the U.S., but the crisis we got reflected private/financial failures. G20 proposals for collective action remain a work in progress. Uncoordinated policy actions triggered talk of currency wars.
from The Great Debate:
Fed is banking on phony wealth effect
The Federal Reserve is committed to enticing Americans into doing once again what worked out so badly in the last decade: spending the phony paper gains engineered by overly loose monetary policy.
That, at least, is the very strong impression given by a speech by Brian Sack, the markets chief of the New York Federal Reserve, a man whose job it will be to implement the second round of large-scale quantitative easing coming after the elections in November.
from The Great Debate:
There’s no way to hedge politics
Ben Bernanke in peril and the Volcker crackdown on proprietary trading by banks show two truths of the current dispensation: there is no effective hedge against politics and the reflation trade rests on fragile foundations.
Neither of these realities is particularly good for financial markets and neither is going away any time soon.
from Matt Falloon:
Labour lays down policy gauntlet
The Conservatives might be wishing they could have held their party conference before Labour.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's address to his party conference in Brighton on Tuesday has thrown down a flood of new ideas, policies and initiatives from faster cancer diagnosis to choosing how Britain votes in what read more like an mini-election manifesto than a speech.
Brown played to his strengths (policy) and avoided trying to overcome his well-known weaknesses (not much of a political entertainer) in public. Trying to be someone else could have been a disaster for a man way behind in the polls to the Conservatives.
Whether it will be enough to make any difference to the polls remains to be seen -- Labour needs a miracle there after all.
But, for now, going for the policy jugular seems to have done the trick -- giving his browbeaten party something to get excited about and hitting the Conservatives where it hurts.
David Cameron's Conservatives have been accused of not giving enough detail on how they would govern the country if the polls are correct and they are to win power next year.
They will have to start showing their hand soon if they are going to convince voters that they have the ideas to run the country and aren't just a vote for change for the sake of it.
Labour set plans for post-crisis society
-Member of Parliament Stephen Timms is the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The opinions expressed are his own.-
I’m heading to Brighton to join colleagues from across Government, the Parliamentary Labour Party and grass roots Party members from across the country.
Why big government is bad government
-Jill Kirby is author of “The Reality Gap” and director of the Centre for Policy Studies. The opinions expressed are her own. -
In the midst of an economic crisis, we have a crisis of trust in politicians. But it is not through their lack of activity. Over the last ten years, layers of government have multiplied, more regulatory bodies have been put in place, thousands of new laws have been passed and greater powers of surveillance have been accorded to the State.
