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The Financial Times published a letter from William White on 28 April 2024. White quotes Keynes in Chapter 15 of the General Theory who suggests that the “neutral rate” is a fiction that can be used by central banks to escape responsibility for their own actions.

https://www.ft.com/content/218f8a6b-3f69-4d0a-b443-b3c7a0a331a1

This article was William White’s response to the question posed by the editors of The International Economy to a panel of economists. It was published in the Fall 2023 edition of the magazine. White notes (page 6) that a country endowed with natural resources is “blessed” but that poor governance can turn that blessing into a resource curse. Similarly, the whole world has been blessed until recently with ample natural resources, especially fossil fuels, but going forward very different circumstances will prevail. Adapting to climate change implies threats to production capacity, of food in particular. Mitigating climate change implies restricting the use of otherwise available energy sources and their costly replacement. Adapting to these changed circumstances poses threats to both economic and political stability.

This article by William White was  published on 20 December  in “The Market” a Swiss financial newspaper. It suggests that the global economy faces such a transition and that there will be, as a result, persistent upward pressure on prices and on interest rates. Similar  to suggestions made by Keynes in “How to pay for the war?”, governments must find ways to scale back unnecessary consumption to finance investments, both public and private, that now offer (think environmental) a very high social rate of return. Politically, this will not be easy.

https://themarket.ch/english/transitioning-from-an-era-of-plenty-to-an-era-of-shortages-ld.8077

A letter from William White was printed in the Financial Times on 2 December 20 2022. White wrote in support of an earlier article by Martin Wolf called “How to think about policy in a polycrisis”.  A number of interacting systems, each essential for human survival and progress, are currently and simultaneously under threat.  Policy solutions that focus on only one system, without thinking about the effects on other systems, could well prove counterproductive.

https://www.ft.com/content/0472dc81-2b47-46bb-9f07-fd747796e4bf

William White and Sunil Sharma coauthored an article that was posted by OMFIF on 21 April, 2022. They argue that we could be one serious economic crisis away from significant political turmoil that might threaten our democratic traditions. After decades of slow growth, stagnant real wages, and the many costs of covid, a restless public is increasingly inclined to see political structures as “rigged” and “unfair”.  We must cease relying on macroeconomic stimulus (especially monetary policy) to paper over structural problems, while inadvertently making them worse. Instead,  policymakers should address those structural issues more directly: not least, rising inequality, market concentration, environmental degradation and the need for debt restructuring.

https://www.omfif.org/2022/04/structural-reforms-required-to-safeguard-democratic-future/

William White, along with others, answered a question posed by the editors of The International Economy for their Winter 2022 edition: “To what extent is today’s massive global ocean of liquidity breaking all the rules in US financial markets?” White suggests (page 10) that nominal bond rates have stayed low, in part, because the Fed has convinced the bond markets that real rates are “naturally” low, and that higher inflation is only transitory. Should either of these arguments be contested, and White notes there are good grounds to believe they might be, then nominal rates might rise sharply. In this case, ” the effects on an overleveraged global economy would not be pretty”.

Along with twenty other economists, William White answered the question posed by The International Economy. White advised that the negative effects of ultra-easy monetary policy extend well beyond overpriced assets and that another economic downturn could be triggered by a variety of sources. A new focus on facilitating “orderly” debt restructuring would be unpalatable but still preferable to a “disorderly” and potentially disastrous alternative.

The Financial Times published a letter from William White on 28 June. In it, he points out a puzzling inconsistency between Fed rhetoric and Fed actions. On this basis, White suggests that the Fed’s “real framework is anything that justifies not tightening”.

https://www.ft.com/content/d313dc26-b87c-459d-86db-ac27f652693d