News 2024
An overview of the IIMR and its team in the news this year
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25th September
The obituary in The Times for Peter Jay, the paper's former economics editor, mentioned our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon. Describing him as "perhaps Britain's most prominent monetarist economist", the article pointed out that it was from Jay that he developed his interest in monetarism.
22nd August
The special e-mail sent out by Tim Congdon on 21st August provoked Scott Sumner to write a further criticism of the original Financial Times article (see below), which was the subject of the special e-mail. Writing on the EconLib website, he writes sarcastically “Apparently, the author thinks it’s a big joke that these sorts of people would have the temerity to offer advice on monetary policy to the infallible experts at the BoE” and then goes on to highlight the Bank of England’s poor inflation forecasting, mentioning our Chairman’s criticisms of the BoE in both 2008 and 2021.
21st August
Both Professor Tim Congdon, our Chairman, and our former Director, Dr Juan Castañeda, are members of the Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, associated with the Institute of Economic Affairs, which was mentioned in an article by George Steer in the Financial Times Alphaville blog on 19th August The article was later picked up by George Monbiot of The Guardian, in a post on X/Twitter. The story made various assertions about members of the SMPC. Professor Congdon called the article "a blatant attempt to smear by association" and "silly and wrong". A special e-mail was sent out two days later containing a reply to these assertions.
20th June
A further review of Tim Congdon’s book The Quantity Theory of Money: A New Restatement was published in the on-line magazine WiredGov. The article consists largely of an overview of the contents of the book, which it describes as “timely” and features a number of direct quotes.
20th June
The latest book by our Chairman Professor Tim Congdon, The Quantity Theory of Money: A New Restatement, received a positive review in the Yorkshire Post today. The anonymous reviewer highlights the principal message of the book - the urgency for policymakers to reassess monetary policy to avoid repeating past errors.
12th June
City AM featured an article by our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, entitled Did monetarism work? It was originally published as a chapter in a book entitled ‘Conservative Revolution: The Centre for Policy Studies at 50’. The article contains a number of personal anecdotes but also emphasizes that monetarism proved highly successful in bringing inflation under control in the early years of the Thatcher government.
23rd May
Our Director, Damian Pudner, notes in this article on the Institute of Economic Affairs’ website that the Bank of England’s latest Monetary Policy Report has included a mention of broad money after years of neglecting this important macroeconomic indicator. The article argues that the recent practice in the BoE and indeed many other central banks of relying on adjustment to interest rates as the principal tool for influencing economic activity and aggregate demand is unsatisfactory, quoting examples from history to highlight the far greater role played by fluctuations in the money supply in determining macroeconomic outcomes.
4th May
Our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, and former Director, Juan Castañeda, are both mentioned in this article on Daniel Lacalle’s website. Professor Lacalle, who was one of the speakers in our 2023 annual conference in Buckingham, points out that fiscal recklessness and massive government spending will inevitably be inflationary and mentioned the warning which our Chairman and former Director gave as far back as March 2020 that “the policy reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic will … instigate an inflationary boom”
26th April
Our Director, Damian Pudner, argues in an article published by City AM that amendements need to be made to the 1998 Bank of England Act. While reaffirming the principle that central banks need to be independent from the government, he argues that the Monetary Policy Committee’s ill-advised use of Quantitative Easing during the 2020 coronvirus pandemic and the resultant high inflation points to a need for greater accountability on the part of the Governor and the Monetary Policy Committee, including the application of penalites for failure to meet the Bank’s objectives. These penalties, he proposes, should include the removal of unsatisfactory MPC members – even, if necessary the Governor.
15th April
Our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, gets a brief mention in this article in Reaction by his long-term associate Douglas McWilliams. Today saw the publication of a review of the Bank of England’s forecasting performance, chaired by the former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Mr McWilliams expresses his disappointment that the review did not seek the opinions of those who have publicly voiced their criticism of the Bank’s recent performance – of which our Chairman has been one of the most prominent. In the author’s opinion, the report has not dealt with some of the biggest problems at the Bank of England and he is also concerned that its more helpful recommendations may well be ignored.
4th April
Our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, is mentioned in this Bloomberg article by Tom Rees, which highlights the ongoing decline in the annual growth rate of UK broad money (M4x). The article mentions that monetarism has been out of favour since the 1990s even though monetarists such as our Chairman successfully predicted double-digit inflation and a recession by tracking the money supply. As the money numbers remain negative, monetarists are currently less upbeat about the UK’s future macroeconomic prospects than most other economists.
4th January
This article in Stock Investor (an on-line magazine aimed at investors in the stock market) by Mark Skousen mentions both our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon and Professor Steve Hanke, a long term friend of the Institute. Dr Skousen claims that tax cuts in 2017, during the Trump presidency, have enabled the US economy to cope much better than expected with higher borrowing costs. However, he points out that the stagnation in US broad money growth has led to Professors Congdon and Hanke predicting a recession this year.