In the media
Since its inception, the Monetary Policy Forum has attracted significant media attention.
The deliberations of the panel are consistently referred to in national newspaper coverage of the Monetary Policy Committee’s quarterly meeting, and the results of The BEST UK Forecast are regularly covered by the media as a separate news item.
Enriching public debate
Media engagement surrounding our most recent Monetary Policy Forum achieved a total of more than 80 million print opportunities to see, including coverage in the Financial Times, the Buttonwood column in The Economist and Bloomberg.
The Monetary Policy Forum is also attended by a number of broadcast outlets, including Bloomberg, CNBC Europe and Thomson Reuters. Interviews have in the past also been filmed bu the BBC as part of their news coverage of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting.
The Forum has also gained significant attention from the online community, encouraging widespread debate on numerous well-known personal and organisational blogs.
"Buttonwood: Exit, followed by a bear
"When the fire is raging, it is no time to worry about water damage. Central banks and governments have flooded the system with monetary and fiscal stimulus, desperate to prevent a repeat of the Depression. Now that many countries have returned to economic growth the debate has started about how to reverse some of these extraordinary measures.
"A seminar held in London this week by Fathom Financial Consulting, an independent economic forecaster, asked three former members of Britain’s monetary-policy committee—Charles Goodhart, Willem Buiter and DeAnne Julius - for their views on exit strategies. The consensus seemed to be that, in Britain’s case, loose monetary policy might be appropriate but fiscal policy needed to be tightened. Professor Buiter even had a long list of policy suggestions, from freezing health-care spending through to raising the state-pension age very rapidly, that would be politically suicidal for the government to adopt, given that an election is due by June 2010.
"The withdrawal of fiscal stimulus may be the favoured choice of exit route because economists are still not convinced that it works."
(Friday 6 November 2009)
