Peter Switzer interviewed me on his cable TV show for Sky News last week.
You can watch the interview here. I would also recommend watching the interview with John Hewson (for international viewers, John Hewson was a previous leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, which despite its name is Australia’s conservative political party), in which amongst other things he noted that Central Bank independence, for which he had campaigned while a politician, had not worked out as he had hoped, and had instead left unaccountable economists in charge of monetary policy.
The argument in favour of central bank independence at the time was of course that this was a good thing: monetary policy would be taken out of the hands of venal politicians, and given instead to the experts.
Events have shown that these so-called experts were anything but: the only central banker across the planet who saw the Global Financial Crisis coming was Bill White, the then research director of the Bank of International Settlements. White was, as I am, a proponent of Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis. He tried to raise the alarm with his fellow central bankers but was studiously ignored, especially by the so-called “Maestro”, Alan Greenspan.
Hewson’s comments that what he thought was a good policy at the time had turned out to be anything but are instructive, and there’s much else of worth in his discussion with Peter Switzer.
