One year of blogging

Here we go; this blog was created exactly a year ago. This whole year, I have tried to defend and justify laissez-faire policies in banking and finance. This blog, as well as all the debates to which I have participated through it, have required me to question, or even revise, my views on banking and economics. I was forced to read and think about certain topics much more in depth that I would ever have done without it. My worldview and my knowledge have evolved.

I wish to thank all followers and guests, as well as all people who provided me with information and even those who have challenged me. Not only your views and comments persuaded me to continue, but you also made me a better person.

There is still a lot of work to do though. And I will continue to defend a classical liberal point of view in finance for the foreseeable future. Please don’t forget to share!

Here are some of the major series of posts that have defined this year of blogging:

Stable rules, macro-prudential policies and regulatory uncertainty (plenty of other posts build on those ones):

• Macro(un)prudential regulation
• The case for stable rules
• A few complementary notes on regime uncertainty

Bagehot’s writings:

• BoE’s Mark Carney is burying Walter Bagehot a second time
• What Walter Bagehot really said in Lombard Street (and it’s not nice for central bankers and regulators)

The RWA-based Austrian business cycle theory (the distortive effects of RWAs is a recurrent theme):

1. Banks’ risk-weighted assets as a source of malinvestments, booms and busts
2. Banks’ RWAs as a source of malinvestments – Update
3. Banks’ RWAs as a source of malinvestments – A graphical experiment
4. Banks’ RWAs as a source of malinvestments – Some recent empirical evidence
5. A new regulatory-driven housing bubble?

• Is the US dissociating from Basel banking rules?
• A tale of two US lending curves
• Basel vs. ECB’s TLTRO: The fight
• Sovereign debt crisis: another Basel creature?
• New research at last asks the right questions on RWAs

The endogenous money and MMT banking theory debates:

• The problems with the MMT-derived banking theory
• A response to Scott Fullwiler on MMT banking theory
• The central bank funding stigma
• Banks don’t lend out reserves. Or do they?
• The BoE says that money is endo, exo… or something
• Tobin vs. Yeager, my view
• More inside/outside money endogeneity confusion

Does the central bank control interest rates and implications:

• Mortgage rates are still determined by the BoE
• A clarification on mortgage rates for ASI’s Ben Southwood
• Is the zero lower bound actually a ‘2%-lower bound’?
• Could P2P Lending help monetary policy break through the ‘2%-lower bound’?

The importance of banks’ intragroup funding and free liquidity and capital flows:

• Balkanise or globalise banking, there is no middle way
• Is regulation killing banking… for nothing? The importance of intragroup funding
• The importance of intragroup funding – The 19th century US experience
• The importance of intragroup funding – 19th century US vs. modern Germany
• The importance of intragroup funding – 19th century Canada

Book reviews:

• Felix Martin and the credit theory of money
• Calomiris and Haber are pretty much spot on
• A brief comment on Piketty
• A couple of comments on ‘House of Debt’

Guest posts:

• Endogenous Money vs. the Money Multiplier (guest post by Justin Merrill)
• Greenspan put, Draghi call? (guest post by Vaidas Urba)
• Macroprudential policy tools: a primer (guest post by Justin Merrill)

And of course, plenty of other, more independent, posts (about financial history misinterpretation, financial innovation, central bankers as new central planners, etc.).