Dartblog

Walk down the corridor of the second floor of Silsby Hall and amidst the mundane brown doors—the offices of the College’s economists—one calls out. It, unlike the others, is double-secured with a proximity-sensing card reader. The office of David (“Danny”) Blanchflower, one of nine guardians of the banking system of England.

The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine featured Danny Blanchflower this month. Mr. Blanchflower is at the moment the most globally influential member of the Dartmouth faculty. (More significant, yes, than its healthy contingent of rage-poetesses (ahem), mediocre novelists, and “identity” slingers whose inconsequential exploits inexplicably command the full attention of the College’s P.R. apparatus.) He sits on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, making him the English equivalent of a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Mr. Blanchflower has been in the news lately as the most dovish member of the Committee, downplaying the focus on inflation and insisting upon lower interest rates to forestall recession. (The BoE is at the moment at 4.5%; the Fed ramped down to 1% from 1.5% just today; Danny would like to see the Bank of England move closer to the U.S. Fed.) His consistent stance on interest rates has recently caused him to take on the sheen of prescience.

Below, Bryant Urstadt’s interview with Blanchflower, on the situation around the world and maintaining a sunny disposish—of which, as you’ll see, the Bruce V. Rauner ‘78 Professor of Economics knows a whole lot.

Download the full piece here.