Lorenzo Bini Smaghi is set to be replaced by the very-smart Benoit Coeure of the French Treasury – his website is here.
So Sebastian Mallaby writes in this FT article.
UCD School of Economics has launched an Economics Research Bulletin, edited by Kevin Denny, to be published three times a year. The first edition is here (pdf).
The Eurocrats are anxious not to waste the current debt crisis. In today’s Financial Times, Manfred Schepers of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development proposes not one, but two new EU institutions, to be staffed by transfers from the senior civil services of member states, and promotions within the Brussels/Frankfurt bureaucracies. There will be a new European Monetary Fund, taking on the roles of the International Monetary Fund managing troubled sovereigns, but working on a permanent rather than temporary basis within the Eurozone. Then there will be a new European Debt Agency, managing debt issuance and deficit control for all member states. At a minimum, Schepers’ proposal will aid the Brussels and/or Frankfurt commercial real estate markets, since these bodies will need a lot of office space.
Schepers is keen to retain the ECB’s restricted mandate as a central bank without the ability to engage in quantitative easing, restricting its work to commercial bank liquidity provision and inflation control. He holds this view despite the growing evidence that this central bank design does not work, and the alternative, more flexible mandate of e.g., the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve, does work.
Much more sensible are the views (via a skype video) of Jeff Sachs suggesting that the IMF, together with a reformed ECB acting as a lender of last resort, be brought in to restore stability and confidence to the Eurozone, in the interests both of Europe and the world economy. We also get a glimpse of Professor Sachs’ chi-chi Manhattan kitchen in the background of the video.
Viral Acharya and Raghu Rajan provide an explanation as to why sovereign defaults are rare events in this VOXEU article.