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Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 19:11
Överskottsmålet är ett hål i huvudet. Riksbanken kommer inte att nå sitt inflationsmål. Euron är dysfunktionell och eurokrisen kommer tillbaka vid nästa recession. Se där tre bra utgångspunkter för den som vill förstå hur ekonomin kommer att utvecklas det närmaste året. Låter det både stolligt, alarmistiskt och populistiskt? Möjligt, men det finns en röd tråd […]
Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 18:00
Natalie Burr, Julian Reynolds and Mike Joyce Monetary policymakers have a number of tools they can use to influence monetary conditions, in order to maintain price stability. While central banks typically favour short-term policy rates as their primary instrument, when policy rates remained constrained at near-zero levels following the global financial crisis (GFC), many central … Continue reading To the lower bound and back: measuring UK monetary conditions
Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 11:30
This paper explores the merits of introducing a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia, focusing on the extent to which consumers would value having access to a digital form of money that is even safer and potentially more private than commercial bank deposits. To conduct our exploration we run a discrete choice experiment, which is a technique designed specifically for assessing public valuations of goods without markets. The results suggest that the average consumer attaches no value to the added safety of a CBDC. This is consistent with bank deposits in Australia already being perceived as a safe form of money, and physical cash issued by the Reserve Bank of Australia continuing to be available as an alternative option. Privacy settings of a CBDC, which can take various forms, look more consequential for the CBDC value proposition. We find no clear relationship between safety or privacy valuations and the degree of consumers' cash use.
Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 09:30
The GOP establishment is pathetic: A Pulitzer Prize-winning political photographer resigned Tuesday from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, blasting the group for cowardice in rejecting Trump critic Liz Cheney as the recipient of its top yearly award. David Hume Kennerly claimed in a letter to fellow trustees that Cheney’s nomination for the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service was nixed largely out of fear that Trump would retaliate against the organization if he’s reelected. Cheney, herself a trustee, was rejected three separate times, Kennerly wrote, as other potential honorees declined the award. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels will receive the 2024 medal in June, according to an email that Gleaves Whitney, the foundation’s executive director, sent to trustees Wednesday, after POLITICO broke news of Kennerly’s resignation. Whitney said in a statement sent ahead of the Daniels announcement that the foundation’s executive committee, guided by legal counsel, believed it was not “prudent” to give the medal to Cheney given her flirtations with a presidential run.
Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 08:00
Would he? (Of course he would.) Trump’s allies are trying to reassure the Supreme Court that if you give Trump total immunity he would never order an enemy to be killed as was posited in the appeals court hearing. And anyway, even if he did, nobody would carry it out. So it’s all good. It is not: As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s presidential immunity case, the former president’s allies are working to tamp down any concerns the justices might have about one of the more absurd and disconcerting arguments offered by any Trump lawyer ever: that a president would have to be impeached and convicted before he could be prosecuted if he were to, hypothetically, order the assassination of a political rival. The America First Policy Institute, a think tank led by former top Trump advisers and allies, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court last month arguing that the justices should not consider this hypothetical in their decision, because the military would never follow such a command.
Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 06:30
The Hill reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Tuesday interview that he does not need “primitive” ideas from former President Trump on ways to resolve the war with Russia. In an interview with Axel Springer media outlets, including Politico, Zelensky said he was open to hearing Trump’s proposals for the war, but, he said, “If the deal is that we just give up our territories, and that’s the idea behind it, then it’s a very primitive idea.” “I need very strong arguments. I don’t need a fantastic idea. I need a real idea because people’s lives are at stake,” Zelensky added. The interview comes after The Washington Post reported this weekend that Trump has privately said his plan to end the war in Ukraine would include pressuring the war-torn country to give up territory, including Crimea and the Donbas border region, to Russia. That’s actually a nice way of putting it. The more precise word is “stupid.” I don’t know if Trump thinks he can just tell Ukraine what to do but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Created
Thu, 11/04/2024 - 05:00
Despite what many in the MSM are saying There was quite a bit of punditry yesterday suggesting that despite the shock of the Arizona ruling reinstating a civil war era abortion ban the issue just doesn’t have salience to swing voters. The NY Times published this earlier today: Sigh. They spoke with 3 voters, two of whom are Trump voters. So, whatever. The Washington Post had a much better analysis: A near-total abortion ban slated to go into effect in the coming weeks in Arizona is expected to have a seismic impact on the politics of the battleground state, testing the limits of Republican support for abortion restrictions and putting the issue front and center in November’s election. Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court on Tuesday revived a near-total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time. The decision supersedes Arizona’s previous rule, which permitted abortions up to 15 weeks. The developments in Arizona are part of a wave of state actions to reckon with the future of access to reproductive care after the U.S.