Time for Byles to go

In the 1990s, the then government of Jamaica appointed a failed central banker in an African country as governor of Bank of Jamaica in combination with a failed Minster of Finance they collectively destroyed the Jamaican economy and the financial sector by maintaining stiflingly high interest rates that have set back this country for decades.  
Now that the country is recovering from those calamitous years, the country employed what is in effect a retired non practicing economist as head of the central bank. No major country in the world has placed such a person as head of their central bank.
In a letter to the Minister of Finance around April last year Byles advised the MOF why rates had to be kept at levels well below inflation. According, to the central bank that was to facilitate growth and any increase, would trim the growth level quite a bit.
In reality, GOJ was the major beneficiary of the low interest rates and lenders to banks were subsidizing the goverment by getting little interest on their money.
This publication had repeated disagreed with the BOJ policy of abnormally low interest rates as having disastrous consequences for the economy. The chickens are now rooting and the central bank is panicking with the latest measured knee-jerk 1.5 percent in its overnight rate to 4 percent.
Up to June last year Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) held the policy interest rate unchanged at 0.50 percent per annum. According to the Central Bank, the decisions taken then by Bank of Jamaica are aimed at ensuring that the annual increase in the prices of consumer goods and services remains within the Bank’s inflation target of 4 to 6 percent.
The decision to hold the policy rate unchanged was made by a unanimous vote by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (The Committee/MPC). This decision was based on the MPC’s assessment that, despite recent increases in international commodity prices, the existing stance of monetary policy remains appropriate to support inflation within the target range over the next two years. The Bank’s accommodative monetary policy posture is also aimed at supporting a recovery in economic activity in Jamaica.
Something seems to have blinded the eyes of the MPC who met again in August but only move rates by a huge 100 basis point then and now 1.5 percent. All talk of growth has completely gone from the justification for keeping rates well below inflation.
The message seems clear, the central bankers and the MPC are clueless as to what they are dealing with.