On 13 December, William White made a presentation on this topic in the final panel of a two day conference at Imperial College Business School in London UK.  Other panelists were Jose Manuel Campa, Nicholas Veron and Martin Wolf. Mr White spoke first about the effects of ultra low rates, both desired (generally ineffective) and undesired (generally unintended) and then about negative rates. The distinction reflects the possibility that there could be a “phase shift” at the Zero Lower Bound. He concluded by talking about alternatives to ultra low rates, and stressed the need for efficient processes to facilitate the orderly restructuring of debt loads that have grown very heavy.

On December 10, 2019, William White participated in a luncheon panel addressing this question at the C D Howe Institute in Toronto. Other panel members were Dawn Desjardins, Deputy Chief economist of the Royal Bank of Canada, and Mark Zelmer, former Deputy Superintendent of Financial Institutions at OSFI. Mr. White began the discussion with an overview of global developments. He concluded that growing stresses in the global economy, not least rising debt levels, could trigger a recession but would certainly aggravate one arising from other causes. Since our macro instruments to respond were now much constrained, serious thought should be given by governments as to how orderly debt restructuring might be facilitated.

On November 18, 2019, William White made the introductory presentation for a three day conference sponsored by UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland. He focused on how ultra easy monetary in the advanced market economies had led to capital inflows into emerging markets (a “boom”) and increased their vulnerability to a subsequent outflow (a “bust”). Inadequate domestic policies and changes in the sources of funding (not least corporate issues of dollar denominated bonds) have increased both the likelihood of a forthcoming crisis and its possible severity. The policies needed to help prevent such a crisis, to manage such a crisis and to help resolve such a crisis (orderly restructuring and forgiveness) remain highly inadequate.

William White made a presentation on 18 September, at a conference organized by the NAEC group at the OECD in Paris, on “Averting Systemic Collapse”. He argued that we need to embrace the idea (to understand, to accept the narrative) that the global economy is a complex, adaptive system where stocks (not flows) really matter. Public policy will be much improved if we accept this reality and the need for a systems approach to public policy. In contrast, the current belief  that we can understand the system by understanding its individual components ( a silo approach), has led to a potentially catastrophic buildup of stocks of debt and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These stocks threatens not only economic stability but even human  survival. At the same time, the “good will” required to find political solutions to these problems, affecting everyone, has seriously declined. At the least, there is an urgent need to change the prevailing analytical framework in economics.