Extensive research shows that the past decade of low-rates monetary policy has significantly contributed to rising house prices, thus fuelling a self-propagating mechanism of wealth inequality and decreasing housing affordability. However, raising rates can also harm economic welfare. How can policymakers make a fairer housing market?
As bills rise, the planet gets hotter, and the energy crisis rages, fuelled by foreign fossil fuel exports, it’s clear that we cannot continue to burn fossil fuels as we do now. In the European Union (EU), buildings are currently responsible for 36% of carbon emissions – we need to take urgent measures to reduce energy use in our homes. Our people-powered “Unlock” campaign is based on three key demands to make this happen.
The European Central Bank decided to raise interest rates, in an attempt to show its determination to fight inflation. However this decision is based on shaky justifications, which are likely to cause more harm than do any good for citizens’ purchasing power.
Inequality has long been a foremost public concern, but not so for central banks. While the orthodoxy according to which central banks engage in “neutral” policy-making is slowly crippling away, we’re still enormously far from taking the distributional consequences of money creation and allocation seriously. Intensifying the debate on the inequality effects of the central bank’s monetary policy is a small step in that direction. This blog suggests several starting points for that.
On July 21st, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that it is raising interest rates by 0.5 per cent, opting for an even higher hike than what was announced in June. Over the past few months, Positive Money Europe has repeatedly warned that higher interest rates are simply not the right solution to current price increases, as they will negatively affect people and jeopardise the well-being of our economies and the future of the post-pandemic green recovery. Why do we think so? In this blog, we answer a few questions about the impact that rising interest rates will have on people’s daily lives.
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