M-RCBG Senior Fellow-Led Study Group: Megan Greene
Tuesday, November 17, 4:30-5:30pm
Zoom meeting:
Please register using a Harvard.edu email address or request registration by emailing: susan_gill@hks.harvard.edu
The low interest rate environment since the Global Financial Crisis has caused economists to claim that major central banks have run out of monetary policy tools to combat major downturns, including the Covid-19 crisis. Megan Greene (Senior Fellow, M-RCBG) and (economist and macro fund manager, M&G Investments) think this is dead wrong. Central banks have monetary rocket fuel at their fingertips in the form of dual interest rates. The ECB has pioneered this monetary policy innovation with its TLTROs, but the Bank of Israel and Bank of Japan have already jumped on board. Dual interest rates eliminate the effective lower bound and allow central banks to provide infinite stimulus across the entire economy. As political support for fiscal stimulus in the face of the Covid-19 crisis wanes, central banks can and should step in with overwhelming force. Are dual interest rates really win-win? If so, why isn’t everyone drinking the kool-aid? Stop by for an interactive seminar to discuss the pros and cons of this new tool.
by Eric Lonergan and Megan Greene
Megan Greene has been a leading voice in global macroeconomics on both sides of the Atlantic for the past 15 years. She was previously the Global Chief Economist at Manulife/John Hancock Asset Management, where she was responsible for forecasting global macro trends and providing analysis to support the firm’s investment teams around the world. Prior to working at Manulife, Megan ran her own London-based economics consulting practice, Maverick Intelligence, serving global private sector clients as well as a number of governments and central banks. Megan cut her teeth as an international economist by covering Europe through the depths of the euro crisis, first at the Economist Intelligence Unit and then running the European research team at Roubini Global Economics. She first became renowned for her coverage of the euro crisis in 2008, when she correctly predicted a Greek government bailout and eventual debt write down. A leading expert on the euro crisis, her views were widely sought on the German, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Cypriot and German economies as well. Additionally, she advised both the UK House of Commons and House of Lords on the Brexit referendum. Megan writes a monthly column on global economics for the Financial Times and has written frequently for Politico, Bloomberg View and Foreign Affairs. She regularly appears as an expert on global macroeconomics on Bloomberg TV and radio, CNBC, CNN, NPR, the BBC and Sky News. She is a member of the board of directors of the National Association for Business Economists, the Parliamentary Budget Office in Ireland, Rebuilding Macroeconomics and Econofact. Megan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as an Affiliate of the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance at Brown University, a Non-Resident Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. She was the first female member of the centuries-old International Club of Business Economists and has taught seminars on sovereign debt crises and global macroeconomics at Princeton University, Brown University, the European University Institute and Trinity College Dublin. She regularly advises governments and central banks in the US, UK, eurozone and Japan. She holds BA in Political Economy from Princeton University and a MSc in European Studies from Nuffield College, Oxford University. As a Senior Fellow, her research is entitled, Narrowing the Gap: Theory vs Reality for Drivers of Inequality. Her faculty sponsor is Karen Dynan, Professor of the Practice of Economics at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Email: megan_greene@hks.harvard.edu