26th October 2017:
An article appeared in CityAM, co-authored by our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon and our Director, Dr Juan Castañeda, The article, entitled 'Tighter bank regulation won't stop boom and bust, but it will damage growth and prosperity', touched on themes which will be familiar to anyone who has followed the work of the Institute.
In particular it mentioned how the tightening of bank regulation from October 2008, especially the increases in banks' minimum capital-to-asset ratios, caused banks to shed risk assets and so led to the destruction of money balances. The resulting drop in the rate of money growth - and even outright declines in the quantity of money in some countries in 2009 and 2010 - aggravated the downturn in demand, output and employment, and it was the consequent severity of the cyclical setback that justified its characterisation as "the Great Recession". In short, officialdom's actions to check the recession had the effect of making it worse.
You can read the article by pressing this link
9th August 2017:
Our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, published an article in the Daily Telegraph pointing out that mistakes by regulators were the main reason that the Great Recession was so severe. As Professor Congdon rightly points out:-
"If the Bank of England had been more flexible in the early stages of the crisis, and if officialdom had taken action in autumn 2008 to boost the quantity of money rather than focussing so obsessively on bank capital, the worst of the UK's Great Recession could have been avoided. In their determination to punish the bankers for their actual or alleged sins, top central bankers and regulators forgot the importance of the quantity of money to macroeconomic conditions"
You can read more here
13th April 2017:
Our Director, Juan Castañeda's, was quoted in an article published by S&P Global Market Intelligence about the allegations of the rigging of the LIBOR (London Interbank Overnight Rate) in 2008.
"Our monetary system is purely based on trust and the record and effectiveness of the BoE and the rest of the banking sector," said Dr. Castañeda. "The alleged pressure of the government and the BoE to keep LIBOR rates artificially low back in the autumn of 2008.....erodes the sound functioning of markets and the formation of interest rates, which are key signals for households and companies in planning their decisions."
You can read the full article here
16th March 2017:
Our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, co-authored an op-ed on the subject of bank capitalisation in the Wall Street Journal with Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University
You can read Professor Congdon's summary of the article here
26th January 2017:
Prospectus now available for our new MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking, which starts in September
See here for more details about an unique MSc programme in the UK
January 2017:
Dr Juan Castañeda interviewed on the subject of publicly-owned central banks
Our Director, Dr Juan Castañeda, was interviewed by Jennifer Laidlaw (Standard and Poor's) about publicly traded central banks.Read more......