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Bursting bubbles

Bursting bubbles

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I interviewed Jacob Frenkel, chairman and CEO of the G30 and former Bank of Israel governor, for Markit Magazine.

The full interview is available for free here, but I thought his thoughts on the limits of macroprudential tools in the face of low interest rates are worth noting.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” [Dr Frenkel] says bluntly. “Interest rates are the most efficient instrument of monetary policy, period. If the use of the interest rate instrument is limited due to the zero bound constraint, can you still operate with macroprudential  policies? The answer is probably ‘yes’ but it will be less efficient. In order to be effective you will need to use macroprudential measures in a draconian way.”

Bursting Bubbles, Markit Magazine

Millionaire in the machine

Millionaire in the machine

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A non-finance related piece I wrote for Upgrade on one business tycoon’s quest for immortality through new technology.

Dmitry Itskov with Hiroshi Ishiguro at the Global Future 2045 International Congress
Dmitry Itskov with Hiroshi Ishiguro at the Global Future 2045 International Congress

Dmitry Itskov dreams of immortality.

It’s a dream that the Russian multimillionaire is hoping to engineer into reality in a relatively short 32 years with his creation of the “2045 Initiative” – a project devoted to the kind of “life extension technologies” that currently populate science fiction.

Mr Itskov’s second attempt at promoting those technologies to a wider audience is the “Global Future 2045 International Congress,” held in New York over two days in June, and a follow-up to a similar gathering that took place in Moscow last year.

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