“Unknown Unknowns”: High Public Debt Levels and Other Sources of Risk in Today’s Macroeconomic Environment http://t.co/YYj082lXmb
15 minutes ago
-
Four Passover Seder questions
I would like to celebrate the Passover and Easter of my heathen readers by carrying an old tradition to my column. Jews remember their exodus from Egypt at the Seder, which marks the beginning of Passover. During the dinner, which was also Jesus’ Last Supper, the youngest child at the table asks four questions about [...]
-
Is the music about to stop again?
Yep, at least according to the Central Bank of Turkey: Jeremy Irons’ character in the movie Margin Call, the CEO of an investment bank, reveals at one point why he “earns the big bucks”: “I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what the music might do a week, a [...]
-
The Central Bank of Turkey manages to surprise yet again!
The Central Bank of Turkey managed to surprise again by cutting its overnight lending rate, the ceiling of the interest rare corridor, a full one percentage point and not hiking reserve requirement ratios (RRRs). Of the 16economists surveyed by business channel CNBC-e, only 3 were expecting a cut, and all only 25bp. Similarly, only 2 [...]
-
What will the Central Bank of Turkey do at Tuesday’s rate-setting meeting?
Despite a lot of push from a world-renowned ornithologist friend, I never took up bird-watching. It seemed way too difficult to wait for hours to catch a glimpse of a small unidentified flying object and try to identify it. I was in Ankara on March 15 to, among other things, give a guest lecture at [...]
-
Turkish Monetary policy’s ‘Groundhog Day’
I wasn’t planning on writing about monetary policy, but reader comments seem to hint that some of the steps taken by the Central Bank at its rate-setting meeting on Jan. 22 were unclear. Here’s my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, on last Tuesday’s Central Bank of Turkey rate-setting decision, where I go over the [...]
-
Irrational exuberance a la Turca
As I argued in my Jan. 11 column and later at my blog, last week’s rally in Turkish assets was caused by money flowing into emerging markets. Negative economic news, such as lower growth forecasts from the World Bank and Germany, tampered with capital inflows this week. As a result, while emerging markets’ stocks fell [...]
-
Yep, another surprise from the Central Bank of Turkey- well, sort of…
The Central Bank did lower the floor of the interest rate corridor, the borrowing rate, by 25 basis points (bp) as I was hinting it would in my latest post. As I mentioned in the intro. to my latest Hurriyet Daily News column, only four out of twelve economists polled by business channel CNBC-e were [...]
-
Another surprise from the Central Bank of Turkey?
The Central Bank of Turkey will be holding its monthly rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting tomorrow. Of the twelve economists polled by business channel CNBC-e, four expect a cut in the floor of the Bank’s interest rate corridor. Of these four, only one expects the ceiling of the corridor to be lowered as well. [...]
-
Turkey’s contribution to the independence of central banks debate
Central bank independence is deeply engraved into the hearts and minds of almost all economists and is one of the must-haves for a sound macroeconomic policy. Or it used to be up until very recently. Economist Joseph Stiglitz recently challenged that notion by noting Jan. 3 that “in the crisis, countries with less independent central [...]
-
I expect you to die, Mr. (Turkish) Bond
That’s what the villain Auric Goldfinger tells 007 when the latter asks, “Do you expect me to talk?” in the Bond movie Goldfinger. This is exactly how I feel about Turkish bonds. This is the intro. to my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, where I argue that the ultra-low Turkish bond yields are not [...]
