Monetary-policy

Intellectual historians have traditionally done a bad job at making connections between thinkers' thoughts and thinkers' environments. Kaye succeeds by pointing out economy's influence on philosphy. I am convinced.

As an economist at the EC I found this book a good reference work on EMU, strong especially on the history of ERM and EMU and the institutional set-up of both. The arguments pro and con on EMU were well presented and often subtle. Overall highly recommended as textbook for graduate students and professional economists.

Verdun aims to discover why, given that EMU greatly reduced national sovereignty, there was so little public discussion of its costs and benefits. As she noted of EMU, "This transfer of national sovereignty can arguably be considered to be one of the most far-reaching formal transfers of sovereignty to the European level that the European Community (EC) members have witnessed to date." She studied the ways that central bankers, Ministries of Finance, employers' organisations and trade union leaderships in Britain, France and Germany all perceived EMU. The bankers, Ministries and employers' organisations agreed that EMU would strengthen the market mechanism in Europe. They also agreed that it would assist their efforts to create a single European state. As Verdun observed, "EMU will eventually necessitate more integration of economic, fiscal, social and labour policies." Some quarters of the TUC hoped that associating themselves with the EU's decision-making process would increase their power. But the more the TUC claimed to set the EU agenda on social and employment issues, the more it linked itself to the EU's disastrous impact on Britain's industry and welfare. Some trade union leaders thought that the EU would restore the influence over economic policy-making that they had lost at national level. But cosying up to the employer, whether European or British, weakens our unions, not strengthens us. Some thought that possible gains from the Social Charter would justify the certain losses from labour market flexibility. But who talks about the Social Charter today? Did it save any of the 96,000 manufacturing jobs destroyed in Britain last year? So why was there so little public discussion of EMU's costs and benefits? Verdun does not finally explain, but one suspects that it was because its benefits would accrue only to the ruling classes of Britain, France and Germany, while the public, the vast majority of us who have to work for a living, would suffer all the costs.

Hinkle and Montiel have written a very good book. The book is very comprehensive and detailed. Understanding exchange rate issues is not an easy task, but dealing with exchange rate issues in developing countries is more daunting. In this connection, the authors do a very good job in trying to explain the various concepts of exchange rate misalignment in these emerging countries. One particular important aspect of the book is that it lays before the reader the various methodological approaches to measuring exchange rate misalignment in developing countries, and thus makes it easier for the reader to compare the relative merits and demerits of each methodology. In this wise, the reader is saved the trouble and time of having to glean through a slew of literature (very large indeed) in this subject area. The books thus becomes a mini-library of exchange rate related issues in developing countries. The book couldn't have come out in a more opportune time than this when issues of exchange rate crises in developing countries have assumed a center stage in international finance. It is a very good book for graduates students and other researchers interested in exchange rates issues in developing countries.

Thia is a study of financial fragility by eminent scholars who provide an insight to the current issues.

This book is updated to the latest development in financial market, institutions and structure.

It concisely presented the money and capital markets with a touch of history and functionality.

I particularly like the balanced view of the authors in their presentations. It successfully illustrates the functional as well as risk consideration of the markets and institutions.

This book should serve well for student studying in domestic financial market and also as a bridging link to international financial system.

This book is a thoughtful, amply documented reflection on the future of currency. The dollar, euro and yen dominate the global monetary order, with the dollar now unrivaled at the top and unlikely to be threatened in the future. The countries that issue lesser currencies face a trade-off between monetary sovereignty and international acceptability (with all its economic advantages). Some economists say these lesser currencies should simply dollarize, that is, sacrifice their monetary sovereignty on the altar of international economic efficiency by adopting a stronger currency as their own. Author Benjamin J. Cohen argues that these countries are likely to reject dollarization because the emotional and political advantages of issuing one's own currency are simply too strong. He suggests various alternate mechanisms that allow countries to maintain some monetary independence and authority while gaining the advantages of a fully liquid, widely used currency. Non-specialists may find his extensive discussions a bit dry or sometimes tedious, but we applaud the author's ability to explore monetary economics in admirably lucid detail.

This book shows how successive German Governments have maintained Germany's dominance over the European Union. In 1978, Chancellor Schmidt suggested a European Monetary System whose members would share responsibility: this drew in the leaders of the other EU states. But the German Government then changed the EMS's rules so it was created in March 1979 as a Deutschmark zone.

The Bundesbank dominated the EMS, forcing deflation on its members. They suffered substantial slowdowns in growth and increased unemployment in the 1980s, and levels of investment declined compared to the rest of the industrialised world. Trade between EMS members actually fell, and their inflation rates declined no more than those of non-members. As the Federation of German Trade Unions said, "We have criticised the Bundesbank because it always cares more about monetary stability than general economic policy. We put employment first"; the Bank was "strangling growth in Germany and Europe".

In 1987, the French Government proposed a Franco-German Economic and Financial Council to coordinate economic and monetary policies. Chancellor Kohl at first agreed, but the Bundesbank refused to share power. So Kohl then stripped the proposed Council of any policy-making powers, preserving the Bundesbank's dominance.

In 1988, the French Government put forward a scheme for Economic and Monetary Union. Kohl at first rejected it, in order to win the 1990 election, then embraced it after the election. The scheme's European Central Bank, unaccountable and unelected, was modelled on the Bundesbank, except that it is not obliged to support Government policy. Its only aim is price stability. The President of the ECB promised that "policy will be directed towards the French and German economies ... smaller fry with other needs come second ..." But even in the EMS's dominant economy, unemployment is five million.

By entering EMU, we would hand over control of our economy, irrevocably, to a replica of the Bundesbank, in which our needs would be subordinate. We would lose at once and for ever our sovereignty and democracy.

This is a collection of Bordo's scholarly work on the Gold Standard. It's mostly academic in style and contains quite a lot which will be beyond the generalist reader. Also, there is little here that will be new for those who know the topic well.

What I did like was the introductary chapters which describe how the system worked at different times and also how differently its workings were percived amongst central figures at the time. I found this very useful since most texts would have you believe that the system was a smooth functioning and uniform entity. It obviously wasn't. Thank you MB for this valuable insight.

This is great, hard-core history.

While this book probably won't appeal to the average run-of-the-mill history buff, it will attract anyone who wants to lose himself in a vary narrow, hyper-specialized area of history.

In many ways the economic disaster of Germany between 1914-1924 reworked the foundation of modern finance. For the first time in western history a political system was literally straightjacketed into salvaging an impossible economic situation. This book goes into exhaustive detail contrasting the unenlightened economic policies of the Allies to the increasingly discouraged Germans who desperately wanted to bring order to their lives.

Feldman does a great job helping the reader tune into the magnitude of the hopelessness that the German people felt regarding the impossibility of satisfying unpayable reparations. This is a crisp retelling of a people who did not have, and indeed were prevented from having the economic infrastructure to participate in a functional modern economy.

By the time Feldman is done telling you the story of Germany's incomprehensible inflation, you'll feel an intimacy with this subject. This book is indispensable for understanding the origins of the seething anger, frustration and hostility that the Nazi's were able to so successfully tap into and manipulate.

Finally, I should note that this book is itself something of an ordeal to read; it took me well over two years to read this 4 pound monster. But I have to say I enjoyed every hour I spent with it...