The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Friday, July 6, 2012

Carr: Central bankers are over-engineering policy

I've made the same point many times myself. Here's Adam:

I’m sure central bankers and there governments think they were doing a good thing. Trying to boost confidence with coordinated action and all that. The trouble is their actions are just panicking people. It’s like in Australia when the RBA cut rates and business and consumer confidence actually deteriorated after. Seeing policymakers panic like this alarms people, and the worst part of it is, most sane know that these actions are futile. This is implied by the fact bankers feel compelled to continually undertake more useless stimulus. Which obviously didn’t work the first 10 times (or whatever). The fact they feel they need to do it again shows they don’t know what else to do – ‘Don’t panic people everything is under control! Remain calm’. What are rates at 0.5 per cent or 0 per cent going to achieve that a cash rate of 1 per cent couldn’t? The answer is nothing.