Come on @bankofengland you can do better. This is a matter of huge import. And raising the issue of 'cost'? On a matter like this? With modern electronic search capabilities?
Obvs everyone wants to know whether HMT encouraged you to bend the rules to lend to Greensill. You should be on the front foot disclosing everything without these requests having to come.
These schemes risk blurring operational independence and the the integrity of the Bank's policies. Full transparency will help clarify that all was well. True of course unless all was not well. Which is what one might infer from you not wanting full transparency.
This reply is the sort of thing you'd write if the FT had decided to launch an inquiry into the efficiency of paper clip procurement at the BoE.
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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.
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?'