Dollar borrowing outside the United States has over generations grown to be very large, with US policy providing some inducement and, in critical episodes, support. In a new paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Policy Hub, Robert N. McCauley highlights three instances where the US Federal Reserve (Fed) has backstopped markets as […]
By Manuel Cruz On Thursday, March 21, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center hosted Manuela Moschella, Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna, to present the main ideas of her forthcoming book, “Unexpected Revolutionaries: How Central Banks Made and Unmade Economic Orthodoxy.” In her discussion, Moschella explained the institutional transformation of central […]
The South African National Treasury (NT) recently proposed to transfer 30 percent of the unrealized gain on the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB’s) gold and foreign exchange reserves, worth about 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), to the NT. The February budget announcement led government bond yields to decline as market participants foresaw a […]
The rapid growth in stablecoin issuance and the recent testing of stablecoins’ par settlement promises has provoked a flurry of papers proposing various forms of regulation and alternatives, from various vantage points. However, how do stablecoins hold up from the vantage point of the money view, which focuses attention on the mechanism of settlement and […]
Euro area central banks are reporting losses as they pay banks 4 percent but collect only 1 percent on trillions of euros of bonds bought to spur growth with lower yields. Once central banks exhaust their capital, they may need to go to their governments. Recently, the European Central Bank (ECB) ceased to pay interest […]
By Mridhu Khanna On Wednesday June 7, the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center hosted a webinar on “Kindleberger and the 21st Century” featuring Perry Mehrling, author of “Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System” and Robert N. McCauley, co-author of eighth edition of “Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of […]
When the euro arrived in 1999, London’s established dollar business conferred an advantage in intermediating the new number two global currency. The dollar business dominates London’s international financial business, as it has since the 1960s, but London’s share in the global euro business tended to exceed its global dollar share. The Brexit vote in 2016 […]
Embedded in the foreign exchange (FX) market is huge, unseen dollar borrowing. In an FX swap, for instance, a Dutch pension fund or Japanese insurer borrows dollars and lends euro or yen in the “spot leg”, and later repays the dollars and receives euro or yen in the “forward leg.” Thus, an FX swap, along […]
By Perry Mehrling I wrote Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System to learn about global money: where it came from and where it’s going. For me, when I want to learn something, I look around for someone who already seems to have a good handle on it, and for global money, […]
Charles P. Kindleberger ranks as one of the 20th century’s best known and most influential international economists. A professor of International Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1948-1976, he taught cosmopolitanism to a world riven with nationalist instinct. He worked to relieve the fears of his fellow citizens through education, thinking that […]