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7 - Pseudo-Independent Central Banks and Inflation-Target Prisons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2018

Jocelyn Pixley
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

Now more a ‘space of exception’ into re-commodified practices, money’s value changes with its social relations the chapter shows, not ‘CB techniques’. Not content with destroying social democracy, financial sectors and states brayed for deregulations/competitive reregulation, CB ‘certainty’ and “independence” with “Inflation Targets” to regressive distributional impacts. CB models excluded the financial sector that was further threatening democracies. Independence prevented CBs from consolidation with treasuries (de jure) and broke CB democratic accountability via their sainthood under fear of market ‘odium’. With “the freedom of the prison yard” to focus on CPI, not bank money/asset inflations, only the BoC and RBA resisted targets somewhat. Federation proved a backstop in America too, with its 200-year struggle to unify monetarily, unlike the ECB and Euro’s foundation amidst boasts of “rational” or “efficient markets”. Corporatism helped Germany, resulting in a dual Euro value of the ‘flexible’ rest from northern ‘inflexible’ labour markets; opposite to the hysteria. The ECB was not independent from anything except its ‘troika’ with the EU Commission and IMF. Regulators worried at US hedge funds not sub-prime; hardly a sin when the “great excess” of liquidity in stagnation descended to the 2007 GFC, to “shock” libertarian Greenspan and the “Big Bang”, light touch British authorities.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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