Press

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

Along with others, Mr White was invited to provide an answer to the question, posed by the magazine The International Economy, of how the Fed’s mandate might be changed. He suggested that efforts to raise inflationary expectations by changing the mandate were doomed to failure. Rather, the Fed should pay less attention to decimal point deviations from inflation targets and focus more intently on avoiding credit driven “busts” in financial markets. The article was published in the Spring 2019 edition.

Reforming the Fed

The editor of The International Economy magazine asked a number of well known economists “What to make of the global dollar shortage?” The answers were published in the Summer 2018 edition. Bill White’s contribution emphasized systemic exposures linked to the major increase in dollar denominated liabilities issued (largely by corporations) by entities whose revenues were not generated in dollars. Should we pass through another phase of “Risk Off” investing, liquidity support in dollars from the Federal Reserve would likely be required. Whereas swap lines exist for European and some other central banks, no such lines currently exist for some emerging market economies likely to be on the firing line in the future.