Comment, analysis and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Wolfgang Münchau: Liquidity injections alone are not enough
Monetary policy’s various guises from near-zero short-term interest rates, to massive liquidity injections, to quantitative easing and its relatives have so far had no traction in this crisis. While the global economy is no longer shrinking at quite the speeds seen at the beginning of the year, it is still trapped in a bad recession.
We do not need a second stimulus plan
Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury Department economist during the George H.W. Bush administration, writes: Another stimulus would be a grave mistake. The first one was justified by extraordinary circumstances. But it must be given time to work. People should not allow their impatience to lead to the adoption of policies that will not only fail to reduce unemployment this year, but could stoke inflation in the not-too-distant future.
Editorial comment: Europe’s vendetta
Governments’ response to the financial crisis has been compared by one senior official to that of rowdy drinkers in a bar brawl: “You wait until a fight breaks out and then take a swing at the guy you have always wanted to hit. Whether or not he had anything to do with starting the fight is not the point.” In Europe that is a pretty accurate description of how policymakers are treating hedge funds and private equity funds.
The world must learn to live and farm sustainably
Japan’s prime minister Taro Aso writes: Food security will be the highlight of the discussion when the heads of 27 countries and 11 organisations meet on Friday at the Group of Eight summit. I expect substantial progress to be made, particularly on aid to countries affected by the food crisis. I will also make a new proposal to promote responsible foreign investment in agriculture, in the face of so-called “land grabs” — the growing trend for large-scale investment in farmland across the developing world.
Lucy Kellaway: Women in the boardroom
On September 4 2006, a company that is now in the FTSE 100 appointed two women to its board as non-executive directors. Since that day, the share price of that company has gone up by 18 per cent while the market has gone down by 28 per cent. As one of those women happens to be me, I would like to argue that the first fact has brought about the second.
Letters:
- Recession is no tame to take an MBA
- Whisteblower bounty must go hand-in-hand with reform
- Solution to Arnie’s budget stalemate