News 2025

An overview of the IIMR and its team in the news in 2025

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1st December

Last week, the Australian website Firstlinks published an article by our Chair, Professor Tim Congdon. Entitled I called inflation's rise and fall and here's what's next, the article focuses on the USA and in particular, its inflation prospects. The Fed's decision to end "Quantitative Tightening" is likely to result in above-target inflation due to the financing of the huge budget deficit by money market mutual funds as these purchases add significantly to the quantity of money. The article addresses the same topic as November's video.   

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1st December

An article by Institute Director Ewen Stewart appeared in City AM today. Entitled Reeves wants to protect today's poor by ruining all our tomorrows, the article was highly critical of the Chancellor's tax rises, saying that further public spending is not the way to revive our stagnant economy. 

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1st December

Analytics Insight included our Chairman's recently-published book Money and Inflation at the time of Covid (see more below) in its list of best selling economics books of 2025. 

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25th November

Our Chairman's recently-published book Money and Inflation at the time of Covid has been named one of the four best books on economics to be published this year by Martin Wolf, the Financial Times's chief economics commentator.  Acknowledging how Tim Congdon was "spectacularly right when conventional wisdom was just as spectacularly wrong" both at the time of the Lawson boom in the late 1980s and more recently, in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic of 2020, Mr Wolf says "He is right that money continues to matter. He is also right that the relevant money is 'broad money'" and calls the book "excellent," adding: "I admire Congdon. He has stuck to his monetarist principles, however unfashionable, through thick and thin."

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17th November

Our Chairman Professor Tim Congdon was one of the guests in the TaxPayers' Alliance weekly podcast A Nation of Taxpayers. In the podcast, he argues that many tasks currently undertaken by the state should be returned to the private sector and that Rachel Reeves is powerless to bring public spending under control because of the tax-and-spend mentality of many Labour backbenchers.  He also mentioned the lack of understanding about the importance of money at the Bank of England and at the Treasury and takes a broader look at what needs to happen to get the UK economy back on track. A balanced budget is a major priority, especially given that we are currently paying £100bn in debt interest.

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7th November

Institute Chairman Professor Tim Congdon and former Director Juan Castañeda were both mentioned in this report covering a meeting of the Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, which voted against a cut in interest rates (as indeed, did the Bank of England's MPC) 

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30th September

Institute Director Ewen Stewart's article for City AM has also been re-published by Think Scotland and Conservative Woman. 

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22nd September

Institute Director Ewen Stewart offers his thoughts about the scale of public sector borrowing in an article in CityAM. He warns that the cycle of increased public spending and higher taxes is a "doom loop of despair". Read the full article on the CityAM website.

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16^th September 

Our Director, Ewen Stewart, was mentioned in an article in GB News by Keith Bays.  The TaxPayers' Allliance has calculated that almost one third of government expenditure - almost £400 billion per year - is used to fund Quangos, which employ  more staff between them than the population of Cardiff. 

Ewen Stewart, speaking on behalf of the Growth Commission, of which he is a member, said that  "Quangos need to be brought under full democratic scrutiny with decisions taken by Ministers and overseen directly by Parliament, not remote, unelected bureaucracy."

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16^th September 

An article appeared on the CapX website, written by our Director, Ewen Stewart.  Entitled How to make Europe competitive again, the article is a trailer for a report by the Growth Commission which highlights the surfeit of regulation, the excessively high levels of tax and spending and the hesitation in adopting new technologies. The problem is most acute in the Western European nations  - "Old Europe" as the article puts it.  The authors of the report urge these countries to learn the lessons from the former Soviet bloc countries where growth levels have been higher thanks to lower public debt, state spending and taxation and a more cohesive society. 

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12^th August 

Our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, was mentioned in an article by Mani Basharzad on the CapX website.  Entitled Why do we listen to economists who are always wrong?, the article mentions Tim's comment on the 364 economists who signed a letter warning against the 1981 budget. "The open question is not, are the 364 economists wrong, but how wrong are they?" he asked. The author goes on to claim that left-leaning economists are always wrong, having made the wrong call over Javier Milei's reforms in Argentina last year. He therefore is highly sceptical of the recent call for a wealth tax in the UK by more than 30 mostly foreign economists.  

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12^th August 

Steve Hanke mentioned our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, in an interview with Karl Block on The Block and Tackle Show. He pointed out that  John Greenwood, Tim and he were pretty well the only economists to warn that serious inflation would follow the QE programmes launched by central banks in 2020 because of their effects on the money supply.  The YouTube episode can be viewed here, (go to 4.10).

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9^th August 

Professor Steve Hanke, a member of our Acedemic Advsory Council, was interviewed by John Petley, our Senior Researcher for a new podcast on 'Recession or Recovery - What's Next for the US Economy?'. The interview included discussions about the US economy, money supply and Professor Hanke's two recent books.

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19^th May

The Daily Economy featured a review of our Chairman's recent book The Quantity Theory of Money:  A New Restatement.  Entitled Central Banks forgot what drives inflation - Tim Congdon didn't. Professor Steve Hanke, the author of the review, summarises each chapter of the book before adding, "Anyone interested in national income determination, asset markets, real economic activity, or inflation would be well-advised to study The Quantity Theory of Money:  A New Restatement carefully. Indeed, this book is required reading for all of my students."

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1^st May

The Institute of International Monetary Research is pleased to report that its Chair, Professor Tim Congdon CBE, has today been appointed as one of the 58 founding Fellows of the Royal Economic Society.

Professor Congdon said: "I am hugely honoured to have been appointed to the Royal Economic Society's new Fellowship, and so to belong to such a distinguished group of economists. In his statement from the Society, which accompanied the announcement, Professor Sir Chris Pissarides remarked that the RES vision is 'that economics be understood, advanced and applied for the good of society and the world around us'. I fully and heartily endorse that vision - and wish we economists could more often find wider agreement about the way forward."

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17^th March

The Financial Times published a letter from our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon, which pointed out that the size of the US fiscal deficit is actually much greater than the figure suggested by Gillian Tett, the writer of an Opinion piece on March 1st.

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27^th February

In his Substack Money Fetish, the Brazilian economist Marcus Nunes mentions an article by our Chairman, Professor Tim Congdon. Tim was very much a lone voice during Spring 2020 when he warned that the surge in broad money growth in the USA (among other countries) would be inflationary. The article was written as a critique of a piece by Narayana Kocherlakota dating from November 2022 which argues that “Stagflation is just what the economy needs." Mr Nunes points out that stagflation means high unemployment plus inflation - not a desirable scenario and one that has not happened thus far, thanks to the increase in velocity of circulation, although he does not rule it out in the future.