News 2023

An overview of the IIMR and its team in the news this year.

________________________________

6th June 2023

Our Chairman, Tim Congdon, was mentioned briefly in this article by Paul Ormerod for City AM.

The article discussed a paper written for the American Economic Review by David and Christina Romer, which concludes that monetary policy is indeed important. Monetary shocks have large effects on unemployment, output, and inflation. They argue that a contractionary monetary shock occurred in the United States in 2022, which will lead to a recession, exactly what our Chairman has been saying.

9th May 2023

Our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, is mentioned in this article by Philip Aldrick for Bloomberg. The theme is similar to that of the two articles below - namely, that the Keynesian consensus in both the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve  needs to be broken.

28th April 2023

The Bank of England refuses to accepts that it is responsible for the current high inflation, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph. He points out that "Professor Tim Congdon and his colleagues at IIMR" supported the QE programme of 2008-9 but not that of 2020 because the economy was in a very different position. He states that "there is no question that Britain’s small band of monetary theorists has been right at key inflection points over recent history" and suggests that when there is next a vacancy in the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, a monetarist should be appointed.

28th April 2023

Our Chair Tim Congdon's pamphlet for Politeia, Inflation: Why has it come back? And what can be done? which was launched on Wednesday 26th April, has been reviewed by the Reaction on-line magazine.   Tim does not mince his words in his latest publication:- “Large overshoots or undershoots on the inflation target should result in the automatic resignation of the Governor and the Deputy Governor for monetary policy.” The author points out that in spite of the warnings Tim was sounding as far back as 2020 regarding the inflationary consequences of the Bank of England's asset purchases, not a single member of the  Bank's Monetary Policy Committee shared his thinking, so his message was ignored.  Sadly, there is no sign of any new members being appointed to challenge the groupthink in the MPC which has led to the current inflationary surge.

18th April 2023

"They've got it wrong; hopelessly so." IIMR Chair Tim Congdon was talking about the Bank of England in another  interview for Bloomberg UK with Caroline Hepker and Elina Ganatra. He went on to add, "I’ve been commenting on the Bank of England best part of 50 years now. I have to tell you, the current lot are some of the worst I’ve ever commented on.”

17th April 2023

“My view is that there will be a recession” – so said IIMR Chair Tim Congdon in an interview for Bloomberg UK with Caroline Hepker and Tom Mackenzie. He warns that the current high inflation episode will be severely reduced as the quantity of money continues to contract,with inflation figures below 5% by early 2024, and close to target by the end of 2024​.  

12th April 2023
 
Our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, is featured once again in an article by the Australian on-line magazine Firstlinks. The article mentions his correct forecasting of the inflationary boom back in 2020 and then quotes from his March 2023 video, where he warns of forthcoming recession, possibly severe, because of the recent collapse in broad money growth. The article focuses on his comments about the USA and Eurozone, mentioning Prof. Congdon's fears that bank regulators could impose extra capital requirements for banks, which would only make the recessions worse. 
 
11th April 2023
 
Philip Aldrick for Bloomberg News UK, quotes our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, who is warning that just as high money growth in 2020 foreshadowed  the present high levels of inflation, so tumbling money growth in recent months points to a recession.
 
11th April 2023
 
There is further coverage of Tim Congdon's concerns in this article from Capital Market Laboratories which also mentions Simon Ward, another UK economist with similar worries. The article points out how the monetarist perspective contradicts the official narrative that the economy is picking up and features a number of short bullet points which highlight the unparalleled monetary tightening in the last year and its effect on broad money growth. Another bullet point mentions that Bank of England officials are very dismissive of this analysis.
 
4th March 2023
 
Our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, was mentioned in an article by Jeremy Warner, published in The Telegraph entitled ‘We’ll all pay for the Bank of England’s blindspot for the bleeding obvious’. 
The author mentions how the “quantity of money is scarcely ever mentioned by the Bank of England, or indeed the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank [and] in failing to take it on board they hopelessly misjudged last year's sudden spike in inflation.” This is something the Institute (and our Chair) has been pointing out since the spring and summer of 2020!
He goes on to say “The surge in money up until the middle of last year was, moreover, so massive that it may have created an overhang that cancels out today's contraction. So massive, in fact, that the ratio of money to GDP is not yet back to where it was just ahead of the pandemic, Tim Congdon, another monetarist, points out.”
 

1st February 2023

Our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, was mentioned in an article by Graham Hand, published in Firstlinks, an Australian on-line financial bulletin, The author mentions that Firstlinks had published Tim's warnings of high inflation as far back as 2020 and that his predictions have proved correct. Interestingly, the article reproduces the US money chart from one of the late 2022 IIMR money notes.

 15th January 2023

Our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon, was mentioned in an article for Econlib by Scott Sumner, an influential American economist. Entitled My 2021 mistake, Sumner admits that he should not have supported the US Federal Reserve's new "Average inflation targeting" policy last year as it became apparent that the Fed was only concerned with inflation undershoots, not overshoots. Tim and Bob Hetzel (another US economist who has spoken at conferences organised by the Institute) are cited as two men who were  - correctly in the writer's opinion - critical of the Fed's expansionary monetary policy right from the start.