Helen Thompson | Disorder: Hard times in the 21st century

Iain Martin talks to Helen Thompson to discuss her new book Disorder: Hard times in the 21st century.
Disorder is a groundbreaking study, explaining how energy and the battle for resources shaped politics and statecraft in the 20th century. It puts the world since 9/11 into new context and shows how the race to a post-carbon economy is going to bring further disruption.
Helen is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University.
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[@andrewbaldwin4454]

At about the 23 minute mark in the video Thompson talks about how one could argue whether the Breton Woods system ended in 1971 with the end of gold convertibility or in 1973 with the end of floating exchange rates. Obviously, she misspoke and she meant to say with the end of fixed exchange rates. By the way, Canada was an early mover in this respect. It went to a floating rate in early 1970, although, as former Bank of Canada Governor John Crow notes in his magisterial paper "Canada's Difficult Experience in Reducing Inflation", Canada "did not take advantage, in the end, of its inflation-protection properties."

[@sohara....]

Andrew Baldwin: hi, I wonder if you could say a but more about this. Some time . .. when you have time. It's a long time since I read up on economics, and I've forgotten a lot of it. It might be helpful for others, too.

[@andrewbaldwin4454]

@@sohara.... Thanks for your interest, Scarlet. I am an expert on price and volume measures, not a monetary economist or an expert on the Bretton Woods system, so am not the best person to give an explanation or even to propose additional reading. However, I would recommend that you read former Bank of Canada Governor Crow’s magisterial “Canada’s Difficult Experience in Managing Inflation” in its entirety. The Bretton Woods system set up towards the end of the Second World War was meant to give every country fixed exchange rates with regard to the US dollar. Since the US currency was still linked to gold, this meant that when Canada floated its currency in 1970 it broke with the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, but also allowed the value of the Canadian dollar in terms of gold to float, where previously it had been fixed. When Crow says that Canada did not take advantage of the inflation-protection properties of a floating exchange rate, he is obviously speaking of the period following President Nixon’s taking the US off the gold standard. With a fixed exchange rate against the US dollar, the Canadian economy would have an inflation rate little different from that of the US, and US inflation could, and did, greatly increase after it went off of the gold standard. The floating exchange rate gave Canada an opportunity to run an independent monetary policy. It would not have to abandon an effort to control inflation because pushing up interest rates caused an influx of capital and put the loonie under pressure, since it had no commitment to a particular exchange rate for the loonie. Governor Crow negotiated the original inflation-control agreement in February 1991. His original idea was one of successively lower inflation-reduction targets until price stability was achieved at an inflation target rate of 1.0% or lower. It was sabotaged by Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin in 1993, when he decided to maintain the target rate at 2.0%, where it has been ever since. Oddly enough, none of the parties with elected MPs in our current House of Commons is supportive of Crow’s goal of price stability, although they will sometimes pretend that this is achieved if the Bank of Canada meets its 2% target.

[@sergioavalos9343]

Excelente reporte.

[@jeremybray9586]

Top shelf discussion.

[@hathawayrose2183]

Waste of an hour. Go and watch The Duran instead.

[@skobi2159]

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