Central banks rarely speak with one voice. At the Federal Reserve, for instance, each official brings a distinct perspective, and markets parse every speech for hints of where policy is headed. Different views may help make better decisions, but do they also help when explaining those decisions to the public? And what happens when voices […]
Spot gold was trading around $3,680 per ounce on Tuesday after hitting a record $3,689.27 earlier in the session. Gold’s stellar rally to successive record highs shows every sign of continuing for the rest of the year, but a healthy correction is on the cards before breaching the $4,000 per ounce milestone in 2026, traders […]
Digital currencies pegged to fiat money face a built-in tension between credibility and competition, creating a ‘stablecoin paradox’. This column analyses the competing frameworks of the US and China to address the paradox. The US (under the GENIUS Act) combines strict reserve rules for privately issued, fully backed dollar stablecoins with market incentives that encourage […]
The growing footprint of nonbank financial institutions in corporate credit markets raises important – but often overlooked – questions about how monetary and macroprudential policies shape credit allocation to the real economy. Using global syndicated loan data, this column shows that nonbanks act as shock absorbers, shielding nonfinancial firms from tightening in both monetary and […]
President Trump’s tariff policy is shaking the global economy and generating high levels of trade policy uncertainty. This column challenges the economic reasoning behind recent US trade policies. It argues that tariffs generally lower economic welfare by distorting resource allocations. Furthermore, the resulting trade policy uncertainty will have additional negative effects on the global economy […]
The recent surge in inflation has led to a significant increase in the frequency of price changes. This column argues that price flexibility has an impact on the effectiveness of monetary policy. In high inflation periods, frequent price changes make monetary policy more effective in reducing inflation with less impact on economic activity. Therefore, monetary […]
Over and over in the history of the international monetary system, national policymakers have pointed to – and voiced concerns about – the effects of policy actions undertaken in foreign countries on the outlook and financial conditions in their own domestic economies. The most recent example involves the spillovers of tighter monetary policies to address […]
