My Telegraph article on Central Banks

Jerome Powell, the leader of the world’s most important and powerful Central Bank has made a strong case for limited independence within a democratic framework. Warning against a Central bankĀ  widening its remit and scope too far, he spoke outĀ  against Central Banks taking on roles toĀ  put us on the road to net zero and other social objectives. He arguedĀ Ā that ā€œaddressing climate change seems likely to require policies that would have significant distributional and other effects on companies, industries, regions, and nations. Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through electionsā€ . If you give an independent body one or two targets and aims it is possible to monitor success and demand improvements or changes where needed. If you introduce a range of targets the Bank is distracted, making compromises where the aims are in conflict. It alsoĀ  opens itself up to more political criticism. There is no serious Ā body of opinion in the US or UK wanting banking instability or high inflation so settingĀ  targets for theseĀ  does not politicise the Bank. The ways to net zero, the speed of transition and the desirability of its various policies remain much disputed, and are far outside the powers of a Central Bank to deliver.The Bank of England and the European Central Bank should consider this advice carefully.Ā 

Ā Jerome Powell wisely recognised a Central bank needs to justify its independent power to raise or lower interest rates. HeĀ  said ā€œ the Fed must continuously earn that independence byā€¦ achieving our assigned goals of maximum employment and price stability, and by providing transparency to facilitate ā€¦.. effective oversight by the public and ā€¦..Congress.ā€Ā  He did not consider how it came to pass that with this independence the Fed kept rates very low, created trillions of dollars Ā and ended up with inflation five times its 2% target. The Fed was free to buy bonds on a huge scale and did so.Ā  The Bank of England adopting a similar policy was not independent over money creation and bond buying. Under the agreement first entered into by the Labour government at the time of the great banking crash, all the money created and bonds bought in the UK Ā required the written consent of the Chancellor who answered directly to Ā Parliament.Ā  Labour, the Coalition and the Conservative governments all provided a complete taxpayer indemnity for the Bank against losses on the bonds. The Fed is just going to take the losses and record the fact on its balance sheet without taxpayer payments. I agree that keepingĀ  rate setting out of the hands of politiciansĀ  makes sense, but also think the elected bodies that appoint the Governors andĀ  question them need to do a better job at finding out why inflation got away. The leading Central Banks should take more interest in monitoring and responding to excessive money and credit creation. There needs toĀ  be a proper debate about how they can avoid anotherĀ  big inflaitonary upsurge – or banking crash – in future.

 

The Fed Chairman went on to say Ā we should “stick to our knitting and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities. In a well-functioning democracy, important public policy decisions should be made, in almost all cases, by the elected branches of government. Grants of independence to agencies should be exceedingly rare, explicit, tightly circumscribed, and limited to those issues that clearly warrant protection from short-term political considerations.ā€

This is very good advice. As the Fed, ECB and Bank of England have just shown it is easy for Central Banks to make major errors in their prime task of counter inflation policy, just as they all have questions to answer aboutĀ  their role in the banking crashĀ  in the previous decade. Taking on additional roles impedes focus on the central tasks of low inflation and banking stability which must be their rationale.

 

It is no surprise that Mr Powell should chose to make this intervention into the political debate as he faces a recently elected Republican led House of Representatives who have very different views on fossil fuels and net zero transition to their Democrat opponents who lost the majority. It shows his customary political sensitivity that he at this moment rules out some of the favourite Democrat themes from the core message of the Fed. The Bank of England also needs to concentrate on the knitting after a bad period over inflation. The BankĀ  needs to balance pressure down on inflation without creating a needless deep and long downturn. That is the part of the Fed remit that makes great sense, to worry about employment as well as inflation within the context of an overriding Ā target to keep inflation down to 2%..It is the job of elected governments to decide energy policy, food policy, transport policy and housing policies that are all involved in current ambitious plans to decarbonise.

73 Comments

  1. Peter Wood
    January 15, 2023

    Good Morning,
    Well, I rate that a ‘partial record of events’.
    It should have been NO surprise inflation came along after so much money creation. QE is not new, it’s been done many times before under different names and always ends in inflation. An historian would know that.
    Interest rates were kept low for political reasons, BoE and Treasury working together to flood the economy with cash to hide the real problem of a shrinking private sector. Note, last time I looked the Treasury was a department of government.
    Powell/Fed is at least reversing QE, I believe selling US$90 billion of treasuries each month and removing cash. Now, how many Gilts has the BoE sold?
    It is generally believed that interest rates need to rise ABOVE the rate of inflation to bring inflation down, so will we, or will the government loose it’s bottle again and go for ‘fake growth’, damaging the economy further?

    1. BOF
      January 15, 2023

      Well said PW.

      1. Hope
        January 15, 2023

        JR,
        To get elected I seem to remember Osborne telling us your party was for sound money! 13 years on how much of the economy was based on sound money?
        How many hundreds of billions created, wasted, borrowed and given away in that time?
        What is the interest on current debt each year under your party?
        Your party promised to balance the structural deficit and pay down debt by 2015? Why was it abandoned?
        Your party promised 80% cuts versus 20% tax rises. Then tried to deflect as a percentage of GDP to hide the horror of lies and true picture. Basing your partyā€™s economic promises gains current position tell us truthfully the outcome against promises. Same for Brexit and immigration as well if you like.

        NB. You already told us in previous blogs the BOE is not really independent as chancellor has to sign off itā€™s QE etc. The blame is rests squarely with your party.

        A couple of days ago you highlighted how we should not comment on subjects we are not qualified in, that would make majority of MPs redundant on the economy.

        Reply I said no such thing. I advised those wanting to probe the vaccines to talk to those who defend them and know about them.

        1. Hope
          January 15, 2023

          JR,
          Please excuse me this is the sentiment I got from your blog. We expect our MPs to raise questions of significance with govt in parliament, no matter the subject matter as Govt has the ability to select from a wide range of experts to provide a truthful balanced informed view. Unfortunately it failed to do so with covid and vaccines even though the health and lives of people are at stake.

          Reply Yes I agree. There are MPs studying the vaccine issue but not me.

    2. Nottingham Lad Himself
      January 15, 2023

      This is just another pitch from Sir John promoting the centralisation of all power into Tory Westminster hands.

      Thatcher’s governments made huge such inroads by removing local, democratically-elected power from local authorities.

      It’s actually comical that these are the very people who shrieked the loudest about the very limited, treaty-defined migration of powers to the democratically-elected European Parliament in uncontroversial areas such as food and medicine safety.

      1. mickc
        January 15, 2023

        Would you prefer power to be in unelected hands? Such bodies are always described as independent (they are not) and they are certainly not unbiased.
        That is the case with the EU, whose Parliament is effectively powerless, and increasingly so in Britain and the major parties ( both having had elected leaders thrown out by cabals of the real power) but it should be resisted.
        Famously democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others…it would be good if it re-emerged.

        1. MFD
          January 15, 2023

          100% MICKC
          We need rid of most of the MPā€™s as they in the main are nodding fools!

      2. Richard1
        January 15, 2023

        perhaps you should re-read Sir John’s post. He is saying that important political policy decisions – eg the path and timing to achieve net zero – should be a matter for the political process to determine, not for some appointed official or body.

        it seems a very sensible position to me and I can’t see how anyone who supports democracy and representative government could disagree with it.

        1. SM
          January 15, 2023

          +10

        2. hefner
          January 15, 2023

          That would assume that our representatives listen to all voices on various topics. How would you be sure of such a thing when some MPs are more likely to listen to what comes from the IEA (or similar think tanks) and do not even attend events organised for MPs by people of opposite opinion (academics, other think tanks, charities, ā€¦)?

          1. Richard1
            January 15, 2023

            MPs are chosen in elections. How else would you propose to do it?

      3. Bloke
        January 15, 2023

        NLH:
        The EU would prefer the Sheriff of Nottingham as their local authority in the UK, to collect tax and pay for their waste.

        1. Bill Brown
          January 16, 2023

          Bloke

          What a load of absolute nonsense

          1. Bloke
            January 17, 2023

            That’s why the UK left it.

    3. formula57
      January 15, 2023

      @ Peter Wood “Now, how many Gilts has the BoE sold?” – In 2022 Q4 sales of Ā£2.9 billion were intended and I think made and in 2023 Q1 sales of Ā£3.25 billion are intended. The MPCā€™s annual target of an Ā£80bn stock reduction in gilts held in the Asset Purchase Facility was affirmed on 29, September 2022: I am unaware of any revision.

      Recall the adoption of the QE policy (so called) was to avoid the otherwise necessary alternative of seeing excess debt absorbed through myriad insolvencies across a broad spectrum of businesses. Given the economic conditions prevailing when it was introduced, QE was not inflationary. Clearly though, it ought to have been unwound sooner than it has been.

      I question if there is a general belief that interest rates above the rate of inflation are needed to curb inflation rates. Note also that inflation arising from supply side shocks (especially for imported goods) is not susceptible to correction by monetary policy in any direct way.

  2. Javelin
    January 15, 2023

    On one hand central banks have a responsibility to keep inflation down. On the other hand they can create inflationary opportunities using QE.

    QE is pretty murky business.

    1. Lifelogic
      January 15, 2023

      Indeed and they usually take the latter course as it is back door taxation on top of the vast front door taxation. That is certainly what Sunak/Bailey did when Sunak was Chancellor. Now he expect people to accept pay “rises” of say 4% but have these paid in Ā£ sterling that now worth perhaps only 80p per Ā£1 of what is was a couple of years back. Unsurprisingly they are not too keen. Inflation and the economic problems where not caused by Putin and Covid but by the absurd Net Zero religion, the over reaction to Covid, the net harm vaccines, the QE, the vast over taxation and appalling waste of tax payers money under Sunak. Made even worst by open door and largely unskilled high immigration levels.

      1. Donna
        January 15, 2023

        Well said Lifelogic. All the economic problems we’re experiencing were created by the Government/Treasury/BoE. The only question is whether it was deliberate or not.

        Nice to see you back.

      2. Lifelogic
        January 15, 2023

        Adam Smith ā€œPeople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise pricesā€œ

        What is the modern equivalent of this statement for the Annual Meeting of the WEF at Davos 2023?

        People of large businesses, governments, regulators, politicians, bought scientists and bought journalists, pushers of fake green lunacy and the net harm (for many) “vaccines” talk of a conspiracy against taxpayers, democracy, energy buyers, car users, small businesses, people in education now largely indoctrination, people needing medical assistance (and people being given medical net harm medical treatments who did not need it), people trying to have babies and many others it seems. Or something like this perhaps?

      3. Hope
        January 15, 2023

        J,LL,
        Osborne was going to be running the economy on sound money. Remember this socialist outfit blamed Labour for crashing the economy and everything they could lob at them. There was hardly any difference between Darling and Osborneā€™s plan. Both going to reduce the amount of increase in public spending not actual cut backs. Yet Osborne claimed 80% cuts against 20% tax rises. Mervyn King at the time highlighted whoever won the election would never be elected again if they implemented the actual cuts actually required.

        Sunak and Hunt not making cuts to head count of civil service!! The 91,000 cut scrapped, taxes raised instead!

    2. IanT
      January 15, 2023

      No, QE has happened in plain sight Javelin, it’s just that people were memerised by rising house prices and cheap mortgages, so they didn’t notice the other inflationary effects. It’s mostly a matter of perspective really.
      Are ‘things’ getting more expensive or is the Pound just worth less? I wonder if Mr Sunak will make “The Pound in your Pocket” speech soon?

    3. turboterrier
      January 15, 2023

      Javelin
      Banking in all its many guises can be a murky.

  3. Sea_Warrior
    January 15, 2023

    Central banks are too big for their boots – especially in America. Powell is right.
    I wonder where the Base Rate will be at the end of the year? The Sunday Times, last week, seemed to think we have another 0.5% to endure, getting up to 4% by the end of March? Then what? Will it stay there – or trickle down a bit, below where it is today? The latter course will do wonders for the government’s poll ratings.
    Another thing that struck me last week was seeing that it’s now possible to get north of 3% on savings – even premium bonds are paying that – but still find a variable-rate mortgage charging less than 4%.
    P.S. In your Twitter feed, you comment about the GFA; America is not a party to it. The only message that should be delivered to Biden – a man rude enough to demarche the UK immediately before the Cornwall summit – is that he should keep his nose out of Northern Ireland. I’m not likely to make Foreign Secretary but if I had received that demarche I would have kicked the ambassador out of the country.

  4. BOF
    January 15, 2023

    ‘It is the job of elected governments to decide energy policy, food policy, transport policy and housing policies that are all involved in current ambitious plans to decarbonise.’

    Well said Sir John. The banks should stay well out of politics. Elected governments should stay well away from Davos and the WEF. Instead they will be attending in their thousands and returning with more insanite ideas to impose on ordinary people. Next their will be a plan to tax the air we breathe. Oh wait, that is already being discussed in terms of indoor air quality which, horror of horrors, is unregulated.

    Who elected these evil people who wish to force totalitarianism on the world.

    1. Fedupsoutherner
      January 15, 2023

      Bof. The government is now telling the producers and retailers of gas boilers that they will have a fixed quota of how many they can sell. They will be expected to sell those expensive and useless heat pumps instead even though the majority of us don’t want them. If they don’t sell enough heat pumps they will be fined Ā£5000 for each gas boiler over their quota they do sell. You couldn’t make it up. This is like the Soviet style of business.

      1. MFD
        January 15, 2023

        šŸ‘šŸ»FUS!

      2. Chris S
        January 15, 2023

        I was going to wait until just before the sale of new gas boilers was banned before acquiring a second, to be installed, ready to go, next to my current one with a couple of valves to change over when the old one fails. I might not wait too long now……..

        Ditto my turbo diesel Audi A7 !

    2. glen cullen
      January 15, 2023

      You’re correct BOF, Davos and the UN WEF is a direct threat to the democracy of the UK

      1. glen cullen
        January 15, 2023

        Maybe our MPs should attend the Chinese National Peoples Congress ā€¦.its just the same as the UN WEF / UN IMF

    3. X-Tory
      January 15, 2023

      On the subject of energy policy, I was listening to a radio talk show this morning in which literally every single person – from the host to the callers – could clearly see the stupidity, futility and damage caused by the government’s net zero policies. It is quite IMPOSSIBLE to believe that our energy ministers – as well as our prime ministers, from Johnson to Sunak – cannot see what every other person in the UK sees. The only possible conclusion is therefore that the net zero policies are a DELIBERATE scheme to damage the UK. What I don’t understand is why our leaders are such TRAITORS that they set out to purposefully harm our country. It is perplexing, infuriating and depressing in equal measure. All we can hope is that they suffer the electoral destruction that they so richly deserve. I despise the treachery that is being inflicted upon us.

  5. Tony Hart
    January 15, 2023

    Easy peasy. Just make the minimum bank rate 2%. We need to get in the habit of borrowing less and saving more.

  6. BOF
    January 15, 2023

    Insane ideas, not ‘insanite’.

  7. Iago
    January 15, 2023

    A current example of politicians’ policy is the price of electricity at 7.30 a.m. according to the national grid’s website, apparently minus 9 pounds 25p per megawatt hour.

    1. Iago
      January 15, 2023

      And we are transferring four gigawatts to the continent at this price.

      1. a-tracy
        January 15, 2023

        We are paying the EU to take electricity from us?
        Why donā€™t we have economy tariffs at times of low consumption to encourage people to charge their vehicles at 7.25 on a Sunday morning, or set their washing machine for that time. Why not give it to our bakers so they can charge less for our staple food product.
        I cannot believe the UK pays people to take our electricity! How stupid is that.

    2. Sea_Warrior
      January 15, 2023

      I’ll take some of that!

    3. Lifelogic
      January 15, 2023

      Which could be being used by cold poor people in the UK for say 5p a KWH rather than the vast rates and appalling (poll tax II) standing charges they suffer (as a temporary alternative to their gas boilers) if they could only access this cheap power when occasionally such a surplus actually existed.

  8. DOM
    January 15, 2023

    When woke warriors control currency creation it is game over for our world. Neo-Marxists never sleep, they never give up and they always find a way to achieve their aims

  9. Cuibono
    January 15, 2023

    I always think of people in the past who died horribly for things that are now not considered criminal.
    Soldiers forced to take up arms in defence of their countryā€™s borders.
    Quislings who betrayed their country to foreign powers.
    Forgers..coin clippers, if lowly enough, killed without mercy.
    ā€œThe Great Debasementā€ created by Henry 8ā€™s overspending.
    Plus Ƨa changeā€¦.

  10. Donna
    January 15, 2023

    “Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the publicā€™s will as expressed through elections…”

    As Sir John is well aware, that is impossible when every leg of the Westminster Uni-Party is “offering” the same policy: the lunatic Net Zero which will beggar this nation.

    Could that possibly be because “our” governing class AND the Central Banks have both been captured by the WEF?

    I wonder if Starmer will be reporting to the British people (he claims he wants to serve) the detail of his discussions at Davos?

    1. Hat man
      January 16, 2023

      I wonder if the Tory ministers attending will report the detail of their discussions at Davos.

  11. DOM
    January 15, 2023

    This nation doesn’t need UBI or min.income. Tory think tanks promoting this collectivist poison should should be shamed.

    I’ll decide my income not a woke bureaucrat

    1. glen cullen
      January 15, 2023

      Agree – Tory Think Tank = Social Engineering

  12. agricola
    January 15, 2023

    You can lead a horse to water but not make it drink. Boris’s race to hell in a handcart in his blinkered persuit of nett zero is at the base of our fuel impoverishment and the herendous cost to its users. Users being almost everyone equals inflation. Yes there are side issues such as Putin’s , warmongering that exacerbate it, but at its heart is a nett zero target and the dumb way in which its achievement was dictated. Only a politician would dictate all transport to a fuel source on the limit of availability, via a distribution system that is totally inadequate, at what we now experience increasing cost. If you thought road rage was a problem, wait until charging rage sets in. I say dictate because our own fuel sources were being quite deliberately switched off. It was also burdoned with a distribution and financial system devised by Al Capone.
    Yes Jerome Powell is correct, central banks should be distanced from political pressure but answerable to the populace when they fail to control the value of currency/inflation. In the UK they are our largest quango and need to perform for our benefit.

    1. IanT
      January 15, 2023

      “It was also burdened with a distribution and financial system devised by Al Capone”
      And I thought it was devised by Al Gore! šŸ™‚

  13. R.Grange
    January 15, 2023

    I don’t have a qualification in economics, so I won’t contribute to this topic. I’ll just let my MP continue to speak knowledgeably, as I’m sure he does, to the serious economic issues involved. As Sir Christopher Chope and that other MP more recently were doing, on another very serious topic. And because I’m a lay person, not a biochemist, my views on that specialist topic might not be appropriate on this site. Or so I understand.

  14. Original Richard
    January 15, 2023

    ā€œJerome Powell, the leader of the worldā€™s most important and powerful Central Bank has made a strong case for limited independence within a democratic framework. Warning against a Central bank widening its remit and scope too far, he spoke out against Central Banks taking on roles to put us on the road to net zero and other social objectivesā€¦ā€¦.Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the publicā€™s will as expressed through electionsā€

    This is by far the most important part of his speech and corrects the view of our PM, who as Chancellor, said at COP26 :

    ā€œSo our third action is to rewire the entire global financial system for Net Zero.ā€

    CAGW/Net Zero/ESG are scams designed by communists to destroy the economies of the West as evidenced by the fact that countries such as China and India are allowed by the climate alarm activists to continue to burn 5.6 billion tons of coal each year.

    And to quote Greta Thunberg, who said at the London South Bank Centre 30/10/2022 when promoting her newest book:

    ā€œWe are never going back to normal again [after the pandemic] because normal was already a crisis. What we refer to as ā€œnormalā€ is an extreme system built on exploitation of people and planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world orderā€

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ropBOwPvmLM&t=1513s
    13:20

    So no mention of anthropological CO2 emissions destroying the planet here then…quite a different reason given for her activism….

    1. Donna
      January 15, 2023

      He’s not OUR Prime Minister.

      Technically, he’s the King’s Prime Minister, but I think it would be more accurate to say he’s the WEF’s Prime Minister. As will Starmer, after the next election ….. which is why he’s off to Davos this week.

    2. Mark B
      January 15, 2023

      As I keep saying, the Climate Change thingy is a SCAM to transfer the wealth of the WEST (yours and mine ONLY) to others. No, that would not be the poor, but the VERY VERY wealthy. The kind of people that would get a little Swedish girl with learning difficulties to stand up and tell us how horrible the WEST is. That sort of thing šŸ˜‰

  15. Richard1
    January 15, 2023

    the influence of the much over-rated Mr Carney on central bank mission creep has been most unfortunate. his legacy lives on in some of the vague political objectives the BoE has given itself. The govt should make clear the bank of England has 2 central tasks – control of inflation and stability in the banking system. and must remove any official at the bank who considers he has some higher calling in life.

    1. Mark B
      January 15, 2023

      And who employed him ?

    2. Sea_Warrior
      January 15, 2023

      Carney: more passports than Jason Bourne.

  16. Keith Jones
    January 15, 2023

    Everyone is doing their own thing. The OBR, ONS, the Bank of England, Civil Servants in Whitehall, the government “Executive”, countless quango’s, registered government funded charities, 33,000 NHS managers, the media, lawyers, and the list goes on. They are either over delivering on things we don’t want or under delivering on things we vitally need. The poor old taxpayer just has to keep paying in our wonderful “Democracy”.
    Sir John all of your very good ideas are falling on ears that have other priorities ie doing their own thing.
    British patriotism has been watered down by the importation of so many different cultures “essential to our economy” they say. In the process pride in the country now takes a back seat against personal greed for personal advancement. The ruling classes are in a state of war against each other while rushing toward the precipice.

    Please, do you have any ideas how Great Britain can realistically be made Great again?

  17. Bryan Harris
    January 15, 2023

    Excellent advice to all our institutions and quangos:

    to concentrate on the knitting

    Unfortunately they all seem to have taken net-zero to heart, more strongly even than religious fervour.

    This is the lemming effect, something so dominant in our world today.
    If more people and organsiations could think for themselves, as Mr Powell demonstrates, wouldn’t we all be far better off, instead of relying on the constant indoctrination from media and government telling us how to behave, think and even telling us what our priorities should be?

  18. glen cullen
    January 15, 2023

    I watched your interview this morning with Richard Tice on TalkTalk, you answered every question, you projected conservative views and you suggested economic growth and individual freedom ā€¦.Youā€™re miles away from your cabinet colleagues

    And the first caller after your interview said that when Richard Tice is PM he should invite you to become his Chancellor

    1. Cuibono
      January 15, 2023

      +many
      Spot on in every possible way Glen!

    2. Sharon
      January 15, 2023

      Glen, I heard John Redwood on Talk Tice and had just thought the very same thing about Tice with John Redwood as chancellorā€¦then that caller phoned saying exactly the same thing! Great minds and all thatā€¦..

  19. Bert Young
    January 15, 2023

    The world should not listen to decisions made by economic bodies in matters outside of their primary interest . They are not elected into the jobs they do and they have to be directed by local circumstances . Social and geographic circumstances differ substantially around the world making it impossible for all countries to dance to the same tune at the same time .

  20. Lindsay McDougall
    January 15, 2023

    Both the UK Bank of England and the US Fed – and possibly the ECB – have failed to ‘stick to the knitting’ of keeping inflation to 2%. There has to be a reason for this because the heads of these institutions cannot have been so ignorant as to be unaware of the probable consequence of their interest rate and QE decisions. The most probable reason is that they had their arms twisted in private by Finance Ministers, including our very own Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. Their motivation was that, at a time of very high Government borrowing, they wanted to minimise interest paid on State debt. This is the only reason I can think of as to why the Governor of the BoE has not been sacked.

    1. formula57
      January 15, 2023

      @ Lindsay McDougall “….cannot have been so ignorant as to be unaware of the probable consequence of their interest rate and QE decisions” – one would hope not but recall the Federal Reserve for example has never predicted a recession (and is not doing so now, although that may be for political reasons) and moreover it has long been selectively myopic at detecting inflation, having a record of blowing asset bubbles it never recognizes as inflationary. Rather like army generals who make plans able to win the last war rather than the next, economic policy makers often seem guided by recent experience rather than what is to come.

  21. glen cullen
    January 15, 2023

    What about the evils of the UN IMF ā€¦.they have a policy in everything

  22. Sharon
    January 15, 2023

    ā€œaddressing climate change seems likely to require policies that would have significant distributional and other effects on companies, industries, regions, and nations. Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the publicā€™s will as expressed through electionsā€

    Rupert Darrell of RealClear Foundation has been talking to Richard Tice about net zero and said, that all this knew green technology is neither cheap nor effective so we will need to be banned from using our current boilers, cars, cookers etc. My quoted paragraph above more or less states and confirms that life will need to change greatly. I donā€™t believe that the publicā€™s view will be expressedā€¦.look at the Low traffic areas and 15 mins zones, publicā€™s view ignored. Rupert Darrell also discussed the report by Chris Skidmore MP which seemed to be more of the same ideaā€¦.nudge or force the net zero ideology onto people, because clearly itā€™s been deemed impractical and expensive by most of the public.

    Fedupsoutherner confirms the forcing of the unpopular heat pumps with his/her discovery of gas engineers being fined if too many gas boilers are sold!

    The whole net zero ideology is a big con and I agree with those who believe the WEF should be disbandedā€¦but by whom?

    1. R.Grange
      January 15, 2023

      You ask the right question, Sharon, how to stop the net zero insanity. Or rather, who can stop it? I think the answer has to be the same as what stopped Covid vaccine mandates: we have to. Enough people spoke out to make it clear to our political masters we weren’t going to put up with them. It’s no good expecting someone else to act on our behalf. We’re supposed to be in a representative democracy, where ‘the UK public elects Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent their interests and concerns in the House of Commons’.
      (https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/mps/)
      That can surely work, if enough people make it clear to their MP they will not vote for a party supporting net zero. What’s the alternative? Surely not guerilla warfare against net zero measures, as we’ve been seeing in Oxford where citizens secretly remove the 15 min neighbourhood imprisonment bollards. Brave though they might be, I don’t think that would end well, as the authorities always have state-sanctioned violence on their side. Peaceful resistance and seeking democratic solutions work better, though they do rely on the public getting engaged in significant numbers. We must not leave public spaces to the WEF’s infantry, the woke activists and self-adhesive loonies of Extinction Rebellion.

  23. Pauline Baxter
    January 15, 2023

    Sounds sensible to me Sir John. But is the present Chancellor of the Exchequer the right man for the job?
    Or the present P.M., for that matter.
    Two, one time, television programs I remember, were ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’. Both showed how the top Civil Servants were able to control their political ‘bosses’, when in theory, the ministers were supposed to direct the civil servants.
    Surely that is the situation we are in now.
    With the added problem that the mainstream media is also ‘grinding it’s own axe’, on most important issues.

    1. Chris S
      January 15, 2023

      I think we are almost always in that situation !

      After Blair and Brown, I remember the high hopes we all had of the Cameron government, only to find that almost nothing really changed! Not even when he was finally able to ditch the Lib Dims.

      Until the EU referendum came along, obviously.

      I wonder how hard the Civil Servants tried to stop that going ahead ?
      But perhaps they didn’t try as they never thought we had a prayer of winning.

      1. Chris S
        January 15, 2023

        PS In my reply to Pauline, I should have said that the exception was, of course, the late, great, Margaret Thatcher, ably assisted by our host. They never allowed the Civil Servants to make policy for them.

      2. Paul Cuthbertson
        January 15, 2023

        Chris S – Blair Brown Cameron May Johnson Truss Sunak are globalist puppets and YOU the people are irrelevant however, Nothing can stop what is coming, NOTHING.

  24. turboterrier
    January 15, 2023

    Stick to the knitting.
    What sound advice.
    When you get a Arif Naqvi on a WEF platform selling a dream to the likes of Bill Gates investing in the African continent, governments, banks and globalist investors all signed up for it only to see the whole enterprise go so radically wrong. Such mammoth global enterprises must be critically overseen and subjected to strick planning and auditing there will always be the risk of operational abuse. But who takes the responsibility of being responsible and accountable?

  25. Chris S
    January 15, 2023

    It might actually be a good idea for a central bank’s remit to include having to express an opinion on individual government policies from a pure financial point of view, ignoring all other considerations.

    I wonder what view the Bank of England would come up with over the cost implications of Net Zero ?

    1. Original Richard
      January 15, 2023

      Chris S : ā€œI wonder what view the Bank of England would come up with over the cost implications of Net Zero ?ā€

      Do they even care if it destroys our economy and civilisation?

      The Treasury, with whom they work hand-and-glove, refused to give the HoC Public Accounts Committeeā€™s Net Zero Follow-Up Report dated 02/03/2022 any costing for Net Zero. To quote the report :

      ā€œThe government has unveiled a plan [Net Zero Strategy] without answers to the key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on and replace income from taxes such as fuel duty, or even a general direction of travel on levies and taxation. The Government has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses and government itself. The HM Treasury witnesses we questioned were reluctant to be drawn on what the future costs of achieving net zero would be, cautioning that while the Climate Change Committee has provided estimates, they contain ā€˜heroic assumptionsā€™ with errors potentially compounding over very long periods.ā€

      And now we have ā€œMission Zeroā€ a follow-up to the ā€œNet Zero Strategy ā€“ Build Back Greenerā€ written by Chris Skidmore, MP (Oxford, Modern History) recommending even more and tighter legislation with state fabricated behavioural propaganda to force us to accept a lower standard of living with meagre supplies of expensive and intermittent power coupled with impractical heating and transport replacements.

      How can any Parliament/civil service have the gall to class a review, written by the very MP who as energy minister (Oxford, Modern History) signed the legislation to commit the UK to a legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2050, as ā€œindependentā€?

  26. Mike Wilson
    January 15, 2023

    The reason they allowed inflation to rise so high is simple. They thought they could get away with money printing forever. They did it for 13 years without causing inflation – so they thought ā€˜whoopee, weā€™ve found perpetual motionā€™. I am no economist but it seemed obvious to me that the chickens would be back to roost.

  27. Keith from Leeds
    January 15, 2023

    Hello Sir John,
    Your article is spot on, as are the comments from Jerome Powell. But here is the question, why has Bailey not been sacked? The inflation level is not a minor mistake, but a horrendous major one. If you don’t sack people when they make disastrous mistakes, they will keep making them, & it sends the wrong message to all the other key people in senior positions.
    As for the B.O.E ( & MPs ) focusing on net zero that is sheer stupidity. Ten to fifteen years ago, net zero was easy to believe, because we did not have enough information to say it was wrong. Now we do & there is no excuse for damaging the UK through ignorance. Every MP should have educated themselves by reading one or more of the many books now available showing net zero is nonsense.
    Try ” UnSettled ” by Steven Koonin, who served in Barrack Obama’s government, as just one example.

  28. mancunius
    January 15, 2023

    “Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the publicā€™s will as expressed through electionsā€ .

    That’s not going to work when all the major parties form a political cartell to reject the public’s will. We’ve already had that scenario very memorably in 2017-20. And now we see weak-willed politicians caving in to globalist pressures and lining up to impoverish us all over Net Zero. Elections are no longer of use

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