Financial Crises Archives - Lion and Palm Tree

Bank of Russia in War and Peace

How Bank of Russia and Russian Central Banking is coping with war and other political expediencies

Central Bank of Russian Federation Head Office building — Bank of Russia

War and Peace

War and Peace, Tolstoy’s enduring masterpiece, starts with a party scene. Set in the St Petersburg of 1805, the main characters are introduced here. Most of us would have read the ‘novel’ (Tolstoy did not call it one) in English. Lost in translation is the fact that almost the entire conversation, page after page, is in French. It was the preferred language of the Russian aristocracy. For Tolstoy, it was a literary device. He was making fun of the nobles of the day who spoke French to flaunt their exclusivity. He wanted to show how disconnected they were from core Russian values and the world around. Continue reading “Bank of Russia in War and Peace”

Andrew Bailey at Jackson Hole

Central bank balance sheet as a policy tool: past, present and future

Mr. Andrew Bailey, Governor, Bank of England, delivered the opening remarks on the second day of the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole Symposium, on 28 August 2020. He spoke on “Central bank balance sheet as a policy tool: past, present and future”, based on a paper (see here) with the same title, prepared jointly with Jonathan Bridges, Richard Harrison, Josh Jones and Aakash Mankodi. Continue reading “Andrew Bailey at Jackson Hole”

“Pandemic depression”: The way ahead

In the October/November 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs, Carmen Reinhart of the World Bank and Vincent Reinhart, Chief Economist for BNY Mellon Asset Management, have this article on “The Pandemic Depression: The Global Economy Will Never Be the Same.” They cite various data to justify the expression. Bank of England had predicted the steepest decline for UK since 1706. The unemployment figures in the US are the worst since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had data on it. The World Trade Organization estimated that global trade is poised to fall by between 13 and 32 percent in 2020. And the World Bank had predicted that the global economy would shrink by 5.2 per cent in 2020, and that 60 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. Continue reading ““Pandemic depression”: The way ahead”