In the fifteen years leading up to the financial crisis in 2008, there emerged a great deal of agreement on the optimal design of monetary policy. This policy ‘consensus’ was accompanied also by a widely-shared view of how macroeconomies worked as the ‘Keynesian’ versus ‘monetarist’...

One of the most striking features of the financial crisis that began in the autumn of 2007 has been the associated upheaval in conventional interest rate spreads. In the UK, this is most frequently symbolised by the widening (and increased volatility) of the spread between 3-month Libor and the...