If you are studying economics, you should definitely listen to this.
One of the benefits of studying economics hopefully will be that you do not end up issuing confident and completely incoherent monologues about the world economy like these.
Money and finance and macro are hard, even if you've spent your whole life grappling with it. The confusing and mysterious nature of it tempts many to think that intentions lurk therein, when they don't.
I think also that when you've successfully comandeered an audience for your eccentric VJ narratives about geopolitics, it's excusable to think that you have what it needs to grasp the economic and financial system, and even to think that you see what no-one else has managed to.
Curtis gets money and credit confused. [Though so do a lot of people]. He's bewildered by QE [so are a lot of people]. He conflates measuring things with utilitarianism.
He is either oblivious or has closed his ear to the actual conversations about how to do macro and inflation policy and how to regulate finance that were going on and permeated politics.
It works as a kind of historical fiction. Imagine a world a bit like ours in which a whole bunch of weird forces actually did work and were directed like that and had those consequences which makes you think doesn't it.
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Pre-Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement allowed unionists to enjoy the sense of being an integrated part of the UK, with no border between themselves and GB, and nationalists to enjoy being an integrated part of Ireland, with no border between NI and RoI.
The NI protocol within the Withdrawal Agreement, agreed by the UK government, constitutes a partial economic border between NI and GB. Hence loyalists rioting. This agreement was the inevitable consequence of the govt deciding to interpret the referendum as a hard Brexit.
Leaving the customs union and the single market makes a border either between NI and GB or between NI and RoI inevitable.
Labour calling for an economic impact assessment of the TCA Brexit deal is a tactic that took me by surprise. It's not consistent with what I thought was their approach which was to put fingers in the ears about Brexit and move on.
Obvs such an assessment is not going to be made to happen by the government. But raising the issue, knowing the call will not be heeded, naturally leads to saying 'and of course they don't because they fear it will show that there are very large economic costs...' etc.
But doing that leads them back where technocrats like me [not quite the right word for unemployed economist] got stuck pre-referendum, into territory that cut no electoral ice.
If you are a monetary economist encountering stories about Mitch McConnell it can be confusing as in certain poses he looks very like Mervyn King, ex BoE Governor, and half of your brain is thinking 'what the hell is he doing talking about race in the US?'
When you have proposed a particular hammer, obviously all problems look like a nail, but with that aside I think a proper integrated epidemiological-econ modelling body, independent of govt, could really be adding to the debate over lockdown exit and vaccine passports.
Although big picture there is not a trade-off between £ and health, there is once you get to the fine details, eg the exact timing of lockdown release, what to release for whom. And an attempt could be made to quantify the costs and benefits.
Similarly vaccine passports, which are partly about the strategy for the transition from here until max vaccine take-up [and also partly about dealing with nonvaccinated in the longer term], can be modelled so we know what the 'discrimination' is buying and who benefits.