On 26 September, William White was interviewed for a podcast based in New York city called, “Hidden Forces”. Demietri Kofinas raised questions about the current economic and financial outlook and the extent to which central banks and regulators might have inadvertently contributed to new problems while trying to solve old ones. The discussion also touched upon climate change and the implications this might have for the governance of the financial system.
William White answered a number of questions from Marc Schroers about the current and prospective conduct of global monetary policy. The interview was published on 25 September in Borsen Zeitung. The German version and an English translation are referred to below.
SchorerarticleSept2019
On September 10 William White had an interview with Amanda Lang of BNN. Her questions were primarily about the conduct of monetary policy in the global economy, against the backdrop of rising debt ratios and rising trade tensions. Mr White suggested that fiscal policy might have to be relied upon more heavily in the face of any coming downturn. He concluded the interview by noting that monetary policy in small, open economies like Canada was essentially about coping with the monetary policies being followed by much larger countries, above all the United States.
In a 29 August article in the Financial Times, Paul Hodges and Daniel de Blocq van Scheltinga refer to an earlier interview that William White gave to the Daily Telegraph. The general concern he raised was that a growing level of global debt could trigger or exacerbate another global recession. More particularly, White stated his concern about the growing level of dollar denominated debt, issued by non residents of the United States. This exposed the issuers to dangerous currency mismatch problems should the US dollar continue to strengthen. The recent depreciation of the renmimbi was worrisome in that regard, particularly if it sparked renewed capital flight from China, as was the possibility of another “Risk Off” phase in international capital flows.
Bill White gave a radio interview on 17 May to Chris Sheridan for the California-based Financial Sense Newshour. The Financial Sense Newshour is a free financial/market broadcast that features analysis of current market events and interviews with financial experts. While directed in large part to the implications for public policy of embracing the concept of the economy as a complex adaptive system, the discussion ranged more broadly over issues pertinent to both monetary policy and financial regulation. One important issue raised was an evaluation of Modern Monetary Theory, its near term allure but its longer-term dangers.
https://static.financialsense.com/audio/2019-05/fsn2019-05-22-white-0533049305e50.mp3
Martin Wolf, in his article of 14 May, 2019 in the Financial Times, made reference to some of my earlier publications that warned of a renewed financial crisis. He notes my concerns about a constantly growing ratio of non-financial sector debt to global GDP and the incoherence between the near term implications of monetary policy (expansionary) and financial regulation (contractionary) for aggregate demand. These problems, along with many other “imbalances” in the global economy arising from policy actions, might trigger a renewed crisis. Should exogenous forces, like a trade war, provide an alternative trigger for a new downturn, these “imbalances” will surely worsen it s magnitude and duration.
http://www.ft.com/content/f09cda30-7598-11e9-bbad-7c18c0ea0201
This letter to the editor was published in the April 27th edition of “The Economist”. It refers briefly to policy insights suggested by embracing the concept of the economy as a complex, adaptive system. A much fuller presentation of those insights, for the conduct of monetary policy in particular, can be found under the category “Presentations” on this website. Posted on 22 April, 2018, the article is entitled “Recognizing the Economy as a Complex, Adaptive System: Implications for Central Banks”.
https://www.economist.com/letters/2019/04/27/letters-to-the-editor
This article was published on 25 April in a new, on-line Swiss business journal called “The Market”. It suggests that our collective efforts at “crisis prevention” have not been successful and that future economic and financial crises can by no means ruled out. Moreover, the effectiveness of the instruments we have available to attenuate such problems (“crisis management”) have seriously diminished over time. In such circumstances, many debts will not be serviced or repaid. To avoid a disorderly outcome, like the Debt/Deflation described by Irving Fisher in 1936, many debts will have to be restructured or forgiven. We should be focusing now on improving our legal and administrative procedures to ensure that these debt problems can be resolved (“crisis resolution”) in as orderly a way as possible.
https://themarket.ch/meinung/william-r-white-are-we-prepared-for-the-next-financial-crisis-ld.213
This interview with Bill White was published in the Swiss paper, Finanz und Wirtschaft on 6 April, 2019. In it, Bill reflects on how the “debt trap” will impede monetary normalization, and how central banks got into this situation. He also discusses how other policies might be used to raise the possibility of getting out of this trap.
Central banks are biased towards loose policy https://www.fuw.ch/article/central-banks-are-biased-towards-loose-policy/
This article was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 18 December 2018. It was based on a presentation made on 16 November to the Progress Foundation in Zurich.
Gastbeitrag Bill White FAZ Dez 2018