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Speech in the debate on the Budget Resolutions


On 22 March, I took the opportunity to speak in the debate on the Budget Resolutions. The Hansard record is below (emphasis mine): Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con): I rise to support the Budget and, in particular, to welcome the Government’s supply-side reforms. This has been a dramatic Budget, and I would be failing the Government if I did not concentrate on the areas of drama. First, on the disability reforms, the challenge before the Government is clear: to deliver a policy […]

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Keynes, Carney and the corruption of capitalism


We’ve come a long way since the Bank of England’s Andy Haldane pointed out that they had “intentionally blown the biggest government bond bubble in history” and that it constituted the biggest risk to financial stability. Yesterday, in his Sky News interview, the Bank’s Governor Mark Carney said that the housing market was the biggest risk to financial stability. Selected headlines from the recent press continue the story: U.K. House Prices Rise to Record High in April – “U.K. house prices hit […]

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Monetary activism must end in a slump


On Friday, I spoke against monetary activism once again, complaining about the use of expectation management and new monetary instruments in an attempt to defibrillate the economy. It’s a mistake, not least because a failure to contain inflationary expectations could be catastrophic, as I set out last year. Mark Carney understands the argument that monetary activism will cause a damaging “intertemporal misallocation of capital” but he chooses to believe wise intervention elsewhere can compensate. I am sure this is wrong. […]

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The limits to monetary activism are being acknowledged


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Via Bank of England’s money printing is putting UK economy at risk – Telegraph: In its annual report, the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned that artificially low rates and inflated asset prices could also be holding back growth by masking lenders’ bad debts and deterring them from cleaning up their balance sheets. “Prolonged and aggressive monetary accommodation may delay the return to a self-sustaining recovery,” BIS said. “It can undermine the perceived need to deal with banks’ impaired […]

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Monetary activism caused the crisis and may cause a worse one later


Last night in the Budget debate, I set out how “monetary activism”, which is one of the pillars of the Government’s strategy, could go wrong: This is a Budget of fiscal conservatism and monetary activism. It is a Budget, above all, of economic expectations, setting out to people that we will reward work, support families, help those looking for work, back business and back aspiration. In the short time available to me, I would like to speak directly to the […]

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