Befuddled by the current turmoil in the markets and trying to get a fix on what is really going on? You wouldn't be alone, writes Dominic Coyle.
Who better to turn to for enlightenment than a central bank insider. Willem Buiter fits the bill and his maverecon blog is building an avid, if niche, audience.
Buiter is professor of European political economy at the London School of Economics. More significantly, he is a former chief economist of the European bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and, before that, external member on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee when it was first granted independence by then chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown in 1997.
The Dutchman was seen as the most hawkish of the MPC members in his three-year term, regularly clashing with other members and arguing in favour of early interest rate rises.
Maverecon offers "views on economics, politics, ethics, religion, culture, free and open source software and whatever" - although, unsurprisingly, the concentration is on matters economic.
The blog has been a slow burner. Having tested the water back in April 2006, Buiter fell silent until earlier this summer. However, since then, and especially as the credit crunch in financial markets gathered pace, he has become very active. Most recently, he has excoriated the Bank of England, the British regulator the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury both for their bailout of Northern Rock and their refusal to disclose the terms of the support offered. "The bank's credibility is being sacrificed for a bail-out of a systemically insignificant mortgage lender," he opines.
That position, which he has depicted in large part as "covering political posteriors", has received plenty of attention and was somewhat prescient given the growing criticism of the Bank of England and its governor Mervyn King this week over U-turns on his hardline policy. Buiter's views is that "we will all pay the price in the years to come, when the next wave of reckless lending washes over us".
Buiter's sometimes technical blog is never going to be compulsory reading but it is worth a visit, if only for its forthright take on issues generally hedged in jargon.
Dominic Coyle http://maverecon.blogspot.com/
