The Sadomonetarists of Basel

The Sadomonetarists of Basel   By Paul Krugman* http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/the-sadomonetarists-of-basel/ The WSJ highlights a speech by Jaime Caruana, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, warning of the dangers of easy money and the need to raise rates now to avert ... something or other. And his views matter, says the Journal: Mr. Caruana is no disgruntled outvoted hawk on a policy-setting council, trying desperately to set the record straight after being outvoted. Rather, he's the mouthpiece for a global college of central bankers, almost all of whom find themselves under intense pressure from their national governments to keep things ticking over while they try to repair the economy. His views also matter for another reason: the BIS is one of the few international financial institutions (some say the only one) to see the financial crisis coming and to issue clear warnings ahead of time. I guess we can check the record here and see just how prescient the BIS was. What I do recall, however - which the Journal apparently doesn't - is that the BIS has spent years warning about the dangers of low interest rates. Except that a couple of years back it was telling a completely different story about why we needed to raise rates; you see, the big danger was of imminent inflation: "Global inflation pressures are rising rapidly as commodity prices soar and as the global recovery runs into capacity constraints," said the BIS, which acts as a central bank for the world's central banks. "These increased upside risks to inflation call for higher policy rates." In fact, inflation is running below target just about everywhere. You might therefore think that the BIS would step back a bit and reconsider both its policy recommendations and the framework it uses to derive those recommendations. But no. Higher interest rates are always the solution; it's only the problem they're supposed to solve that changes. *Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He writes a twice-weekly op-ed column for the New York Times and a blog named for his 2007 book "The Conscience of a Liberal." He teaches economics at Princeton University. His books include "The Accidental Theorist," "The Conscience of a Liberal," "Fuzzy Math," "The Great Unraveling," "Peddling Prosperity," and two editions of "The Return of Depression Economics," both national bestsellers. NOTE: HE CAN'T  EXPLAIN THE FACT THAT THE BANKS CREATE CREDIT OUT OF THE BLUE AT WISH.