Put simply: the central banks are not in charge. Waltraud Schelkle once compared it to Asterix and the Romans: anarchy, aided by the occasional dose of magic (financial innovation), withstands the imposition of order. 8/n

The best new Substack you're (probably) not reading yet. @cornelban.bsky.social covers everything from ruling the winds and green central banking to kinky investments, China as the revisionist terminator, and what it takes to scale technology on geoeconomic.substack.com

Public Investment Quality and Sovering Risk (with Amat Adarov) is now out in JIMF @gvagrad.bsky.social

Staff is currently striking here at the University of Edinburgh. Senior management is planning widespread compulsory redundancies (without a real need for the same). You can read more here @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/rd72kte...

IMF: "only about half of fiscal consolidations achieve their fiscal targets, including debt reduction. A broad range of econometric methods, based on well-established methods in the empirical literature, confirm that fiscal consolidations do not reduce debt ratios, on average."

Congratulations! and look, @fabianpape.bsky.social fresh figures for you nice dollar hegemony lecture.

Bang: "A truly healthy economy will come from a government taking responsibility for delivering meaningful change, not evoking the bond markets to avoid it."

Paris-Berlin sleeper: low carbon, 2 years old, constantly full, but currently losing SNCF a few million EUR/yr Intl Jet fuel tax exemptions are 80 years old and cost the EU 22 million EUR/yr for the Paris-Berlin route alone. And you're cutting... the sleeper? www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...

We have a great job opportunity for an economic analyst focused on fiscal in our Brussels office BUT so far hardly any women have applied. Pls help us changed that and spread the word! Job posting: dezernatzukunft-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/person...

For a data collection we want to launch soon, we're looking for a German speaker who could translate our survey instrument to German. This should only take a few hours of work. Of course we are remunerating! Interested? Please reach out to @alexjabbour.bsky.social !

Domestic bond vigilantes - the unsung 'heroes' of market discipline; congratulations on this fine piece!

read @alphaville.ft.com series on the crazy 'fiscal headroom' games played by the OBR and the Bank of England with QT, games with real consequences, like the two-child benefit cap, and weep for Labour's toothless governing www.ft.com/content/d593...

scrapping it would add GBP 2.5bn yearly to government spending. That is 25bn over ten years. Only last year, the Treasury paid the Bank of England around 40bn for its 'losses' on the QE gilt portfolio. It didnt have to. No other central bank expects to be compensated.

A case of ‘A poor craftsman blames his tools’ fiscal rules edition? Since '05, the Stability and Growth Pact could discount spending which fostered international solidarity (‘French defense spending loophole’) or which was thought to promote the unification of Europe (German unification loophole).

Highly recommended and eminently quotable on coercive decarbonisation, credit policy, and capital controls! - looking forward to the rest of the @ripejournal.bsky.social special issue on derisking.

Blown away by this erudite book by @valentimvicente.bsky.social 🤯 An exceptional combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical breadth and depth. His theory of normalization not just helps explain recent rise of far right but also warns for overestimating strength of democracy.

congrats to my brilliant colleague & wonderful friend Saila Stausholm (sensibly not on here) for receiving with @javiergbe.bsky.social the Timothy J. Sinclair Best Article Award from @ripejournal.bsky.social for this paper! 💸 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

What a quote; the former UK Chancellor Hammond on the joys of contingent liabilities and why the model is not going anywhere (👋 de-risking), from Aeron Davis excellent history of the UK Treasury since 1976 (@manchesterup.bsky.social).

The World Bank calculated that the rich world earned more than $1.4tn in loan repayments from the global south world in 2023 "Colonial patterns of extraction plainly did not disappear with the withdrawal of troops, flags and bureaucrats." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“In the years since 1982, developing countries have transferred an estimated $4200 billion in interest payments to their creditors in Europe & North America, far outstripping the official-sector development aid these countries received during the same period“ www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/new...

⚠️ Six-year position at our department - work in lovely Vienna with a friendly team, 2 classes a term, and follow/develop your own research agenda. Feel free to ask me questions you might have. Deadline 24/01/25 jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Happy birthday indeed - reminds me of @sarahquinn.bsky.social's debt as a time machine.

Yet another example for @steffenmau.bsky.social's useful concept of the Polarisierungsunternehmer (polarisation entrepreneur).

First time using this nifty tool on central bank speeches -- 👏 and thank you @jdeyris.bsky.social & co-authors.

Looking forward to reading and welcome to bsky @cornelban.bsky.social -- it will be a much nicer place with you here!

Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty -- a progressive reform agenda to enhance digital sovereignty for people and the plane www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub...

Duck tape & nuclear weapons (D MacKenzie): The official history of the British nuclear programme reveals that the first British atomic bomb was, literally, held together with sticky tape, which was used to fill in the gaps in the lens structure & to minimise settlement. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v1...

Recommended reading on Călin Georgescu and what explains his rise (looking beyond TikTok) by Cornel Ban. labourhub.org.uk/2024/11/26/r...

Catching up with summer podcasts and v much enjoyed listening to @andreabinder.bsky.social on all things offshore money. Fear not if you don’t speak German, she has written lots of great stuff in English too. www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/offs...

A trailblazer really, after all the Ministry of Digital can still be reached via fax.

IMF surcharges reached US$ 1.9 billion, equivalent to 53% of lending income and 39% of operational income in FY2024. Mind you, these profits were made from the most vulnerable borrowers of the Fund. Unfortunately, the recent reform failed to address the structural problems of the policy.

Was Enrichetta Prodi the original tiger-wolf mom?