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It was in mid-August that this particular bit of shameless Reserve Bank spin got going. From a post in late August It proved to be nonsense of course. Once we had access to the short little IMF piece, published at the back of the Fund’s Article IV review, it was clear that it all amounted … Continue reading Shameless central bankers

Ethical theories are typically formulated as centrally concerning the concept of right action.  Introductory ethics classes may define competing theories as offering different completions of the sentence: "An act is right iff...".  And that probably works well enough for deontological theories, which are centrally concerned with delineating the boundaries of permissibility and obligation.  But I think it's very misleading to treat consequentialist theories as seeking to answer this question.  (And I expect virtue ethicists would have similar complaints.)If forced into a deontic mould, it's natural to default to maximizing consequentialism: An act is right iff it maximizes value (or, more precisely, produces no less value than any alternative option).  But the concept of rightness has connotations that fit poorly with consequentialism, as many (from Railton to Norcross) have pointed out.  For example:(1) It's natural to assume that knowing failures to act rightly (absent some special excuse) are blameworthy.  But no maximizing consequentialist that I'm aware of has ever held that people are blameworthy for doing slightly less than absolute moral perfection (as we all do literally all the time).  As I suggest in my paper 'Deontic Pluralism and the Right Amount of Good', maximizers are best understood as invoking what we might call "the ought of most reason", or what ideally ought to be done, not what is obligatory in any ordinary sense.  (This helps to bring out that the view cannot possibly be "too demanding", for it makes no demands at all.)(2) It's natural to assume that the boundary between 'right' and 'wrong' must mark some significant moral discontinuity.  But at least for pure consequentialists, there would seem no basis for this, as the difference in value between a permissible act and a marginally impermissible one might be utterly trivial.  (But see my 'Deontic Pluralism' paper for ways that hybrid consequentialists might be able to construct a significant boundary, e.g. by appeal to independent theories of blameworthiness.)(3) It's natural to assume that it's especially important to avoid acting wrongly.  But, even supposing that we're obliged to donate 10% of our income to charity, no utilitarian would think that it's inherently more important to increase your giving from 9% to 10% than from 11% to 12%.So I think Consequentialism is best formulated, at least in its "core" or central form, without invoking deontic threshold concepts such as right (/wrong) or permissible (/impermissible).What's the alternative?  Rather than asking about the criteria for rightness, I think a more neutral starting point would ask: What does the moral theory hold to be most important?  On this approach, importance becomes the central concept of normative ethics, about which different theories may disagree. The standard answers then follow: Deontologists assign primary importance to acting in accordance with duty (with specific theories offering competing accounts of how those obligations are to be specified), virtue ethicists maybe something about acquiring and exemplifying virtues (?), and consequentialists hold that what matters is promoting value, or the realization of better outcomes.I think it's important to start moral inquiry with the right question, because what you ask may have a biasing effect on what answers you reach.  If you work with the ordinary concept of rightness, I expect this would have at least some tendency to push you towards deontological accounts.  (We've already seen that consequentialism fits poorly with the ordinary understanding of rightness, and I think both consequentialist and virtue-ethical criteria for rightness tend to look pretty off-track by ordinary standards.)  But if rightness isn't actually the central concept of normative ethics (properly understood), then this apparent failure needn't be any sort of count against deontology's competitors.By contrast, if we begin with the question of importance front and center, then I think consequentialism (and especially utilitarianism) starts to look a lot more compelling.  Indeed, I've suggested elsewhere that reflecting on what fundamentally matters constitutes the best positive argument for utilitarianism.Reflecting on what's important may also help to illuminate the flaws of consequentialism's competitors. For example, the Parfitian possibility of "virtuous[ly acquired] viciousness" seems to undermine any suggestion that virtue is the most important thing in the world. And the importance of conformity to duty may be undermined by both my moral stunting objection and my new paradox of deontology.So it may well be that other theorists wouldn't be so thrilled about focusing on this question of importance.  But it at least seems advisable for consequentialists!

New York politicians got out of the way for once, and something beautiful happened.

Do central bankers have too much power? Paul Tucker, a former official at the Bank of England during the 2008 financial crisis and author of the new book 'Unelected Power,' explains to Kate and Luigi how technocratic hubris can imperil democracy.

Headline and core y/y CPI inflation undershoots slightly Bloomberg consensus (by 0.1%) (and below Cleveland Fed nowcast for headline of 0.4% m/m, see yesterday's post). Overall, trend is down even if headline y/y is ticks up slightly. Figure 1: Annualized CPI inflation, year-on-year (bold black), quarter-on-quarter (tan), month-on-month (green), and instantaneous per Eeckhout, T=12, a=4 […]

In its zeal to slay the inflation beast at all costs, the European Central Bank continues to raise interest rates at the highest level since the Euro's 1999 launch. It does so despite the flashing warning signals that the Eurozone could be on the cusp of a recession.
The post A Mistake Prone European Central Bank appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Australia's military weakness in an increasingly threatening regional environment requires that serious consideration be given to setting up a defence strategy and procurement body that operates with the same independence as the central bank. The ...

In this blog, Lord Evans, looks forward to the government's response to the Committee's 2021 report as a real opportunity to repair and update the way standards are maintained and promoted in central government.

Though Somalia says the raid was repelled, the major attack nevertheless came just days after a similar raid was conducted on a Ugandan military base in southern Somalia.
The post Shabaab storms army base in central Somalia first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

In 2019, Panama released a study showing it had registered a staggering 4,060 domestic NGOs since 2000. This surge in NGOs is closely related to the intensity of the ongoing Central American migration crisis. For more than a decade, Gabriela Valencia has been championing the service and invaluable contributions of these local NGOs in addressing critical … Continued

On December 22, Israel expanded operations inside Gaza while Hamas launched rocket barrages at central and southern Israel and Hezbollah targeted a northern Israeli community with anti-tank fire.
The post Rocket fire targets northern and central Israel first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

The CPI data out yesterday were not good news. Annual headline inflation was, more or less as expected, down, but at around 6 per cent is miles from the 2 per cent target midpoint the Reserve Bank’s MPC has been required to focus on delivering. Much more importantly, core inflation measures show little or no … Continue reading Inflation, monetary policy, and central bank spin

Pointing subtly to the four men working on laptops on the other side of the café, our guide said softly, "Those are the Russians." In cafés, restaurants and hotel lobbies throughout Central Asia, we saw similar scenes: young to middle-aged …

Call for Papers for a Congress in Berlin on October 7–8, 2024. Deadline: February 18, 2024

An interesting picture from Jim Reid/Deutsche Bank: Source: Jim Reid/DeutscheBank.