Simon Youel
Fresh crises reinforce the need for a public banking system
23 March, 2023March 23, 2023 The current banking crisis puts the nature of the banking system into sharp relief, and forces us to ask what banking is for and how it can best serve society. It reveals how our money and payments infrastructure are public goods, and should be treated as such through a public banking system. [...]
March 2023 interest rate hike: Positive Money response
23 March, 2023Responding to the Bank of England’s decision to raise interest rates by a further 0.25% to 4.25%, Fran Boait, executive director of research and campaign group Positive Money said: “With the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and rescue of Credit Suisse we are beginning to truly see the impact of central banks’ interest rate [...]
Why are we paying tens of billions to banks during a cost of living crisis?
9 November, 2022While the Chancellor plans spending cuts to fill a self-imposed £50 billion ‘black hole’, the government is set to pay around £80 billion to banks over the next two years for nothing. This highlights the urgent need for a rethink of monetary policy. With the self-imposed constraint of a £50 billion ‘black hole’ in the [...]
To tackle the cost of living we need to align banks with public purpose
9 August, 2022August 9, 2022 As recent research from the New Economics Foundation has highlighted, we are relying on huge subsidies to influence the behaviour of banks. But what if we could replace the carrot with a stick? We can not only look to the past for inspiration on how to do this, but to the digital [...]
Why politicians are wrong to blame the ‘money supply’ for inflation
19 July, 2022July 19, 2022 Joining ‘tax cuts for growth’, the latest dodgy economics trend in the Conservative leadership contest is an obsession with the money supply. This might sound like an intuitive response to inflation, but it misdiagnoses the problem and risks making things even worse. While he was in the running for leadership, Tom Tugenhadt [...]
Why we need digital money we can trust
25 May, 2022May 25, 2022 In order for digital money to serve the public good, the public need to trust it. UK policymakers should look to the US’ ECASH Act for inspiration. The spectacular collapse of Luna, a so-called ‘stablecoin’, alongside the wider fallout in crypto markets in recent weeks is another wake-up call for the need [...]
25 years of Bank of England independence shows we need a new approach
6 May, 2022May 6, 2022 This week marks 25 years since arguably the biggest change to UK economic policy that no one voted for - the handing over of control of monetary policy and inflation to the Bank of England, a newly ‘independent’ central bank. Established in 1694 and nationalised in 1945, the Bank of England has [...]
CBDC: A solution in search of a fair hearing?
14 January, 2022January 14, 2022 A new report from the House of Lords on central bank digital currency (CBDC) shows that politicians still don’t understand the problems with our monetary system. On Thursday the House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee published the report from their inquiry into central bank digital currencies (CBDC), titled ‘Central bank digital currencies: [...]
Are price controls the solution to inflation woes?
17 December, 2021December 17, 2021 Increasing the price of money through higher interest rates would be a crude and potentially damaging way of dealing with inflation, especially when it is being driven by huge rises in a few specific goods. So why not control the prices of such goods directly? With consumer price index (CPI) inflation rising [...]