The crash in crypto currency valuations may trigger a radical reassessment. But, just as excessive hype fuelled speculation, a collapse in valuations may lead to an indiscriminate condemnation of digital money and an underestimation of its potential benefits. This column takes stock of developments over the last five years in an attempt to separate fact from exaggeration and
While the implications of climate change for financial stability and prudential supervision are widely recognised, those for monetary policy have received less attention until recently. This column, the first in a two-part series, reviews the key mechanisms through which climate change influences monetary policy. Climate change impacts the objective, conduct, and transmission
Recent sanctions imposed by the US on Russia have called into question the US dollar’s dominant role as a reserve currency. This column argues that sanctions will, in fact, reinforce the dollar’s dominance rather than weakening it. It emphasises the importance of ‘collateral’ demand for reserves, especially by developing countries. Countries which choose to exit the dollar
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the US, Europe, and many other countries imposed new economic sanctions on Russia. This column assesses the economic effects of these sanctions using a structural vector auto-regression model of the Russian economy. The findings suggest that industrial production, consumption, and investment will all decline, and that
Fiscal rules were enshrined in the founding documents of the European Monetary Union. This column presents the latest CfM-CEPR survey, in which the panel of experts on the European economy were nearly unanimous in agreeing that the existing EU fiscal rules require revision. Most panel members would opt for some combination of fiscal councils; more flexible, countercyclical, or