If independent, technocratic central banks are not conducive to democracy, how else should monetary policy be conducted? Until recently, asking such questions would have been considered heresy, but times have changed. Read more at PS.

With many in Germany calling for a ban on Alternative für Deutschland, the far right and its fellow travelers are portraying themselves as victims of political persecution. But they are trying to conflate two different types of regime: constitutional democracy and authoritarian “people’s democracy.” Read more at PS.

It took a pandemic and the threat of war to get Germany to dispense with the two taboos – against debt and monetary financing of budgets – that have strangled its governments for decades. Now, it must join the rest of Europe in offering a positive vision of self-sufficiency and an “anti-fascist economic policy.”
Read more at PS

For decades, we have been told that government-operated businesses are bad for the economy. A staple of the “Washington Consensus” that emerged in the 1980s was that “private industry is managed more efficiently than state enterprises,” because the threat of bankruptcy keeps managers in private companies focused on the bottom line. Originally formulated for countries in Latin America and then applied during the post-communist transition in Central and Eastern Europe, the Washington Consensus has been the dominant economic policy paradigm ever since.