Triffin gained enormous influence by reviving the interwar story that gold scarcity threatened deflation. In particular, he held that central banks needed to accumulate claims on the United States to back money growth. But the claims would eventually surpass the US gold stock and then central banks would inevitably stage a run on it. He feared that the resulting high US interest rates would cause global deflation. However, we show that the US gold position after WWII was no worse than the UK position in 1900. Yet it took WWI to break sterling’s gold link. And better and feasible US policies could have kept Bretton Woods going.
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The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published the MiFID II/MiFIR transitional transparency calculations (TTC) for equity and bond instruments. This ublication means that TTC for all asset classes, applicable from 3 January 2018, are now available to market participants, infrastructures and authorities as required under the new regulatory framework.
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The federal banking agencies announced their support for the conclusion of efforts to reform the international bank capital standards initiated in response to the global financial crisis. The Governors and Heads of Supervision and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Thursday announced the finalization of the reforms to the “Basel III” agreement on bank capital standards.  With this agreement, the Basel Committee will bring to conclusion the international reforms initiated in response to the global financial crisis.
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The Governing Council decided on changes to the collateral eligibility criteria applicable to unsecured bank bonds, i.e. unsecured debt instruments issued by credit institutions, investment firms or entities closely linked to them. A press release providing more detailed information on the amended criteria, which will take effect from the entry into force of the regular update of the General Documentation (expected in the first quarter of 2018). You can read more decisions taken by the Governing Council of the ECB here on our website.
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The Financial Stability Institute (FSI), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) held their 13th High-level Meeting for the Arab Region in Abu Dhabi. The meeting was hosted by the AMF and attended by about 170 participants representing various central banks, supervisory authorities and financial institutions in the region as well as senior officials from public and private organisations from around the world.
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There is a clear need for the EU to develop a more efficient system for exchanging information on the criminal records of non-EU citizens. At the same time, any proposal to update the current system must ensure consistency with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Lisbon Treaty and fully respect data protection principles, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said today, as he published his Opinion on the Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation on ECRIS-TCN.
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Nordea has joined the we.trade consortium as founding partner. The consortium is, in conjunction with IBM, developing a platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) that aims at making domestic and cross-border commerce easier, safer and more efficient for companies. It is the first such blockchain-based trade finance platform, marking a milestone in the practical adoption of DLT in the financial industry. In entering the we.trade initiative, Nordea joins Banco Santander, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit as a founder member of the consortium and extending its geographical coverage into the Nordic markets.
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The Basel Committee’s oversight body, the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), has endorsed the outstanding Basel III post-crisis regulatory reforms. “The endorsement of the Basel III reforms represents a major milestone that will make the capital framework more robust and improve confidence in banking systems,” said Mario Draghi, Chairman of the GHOS and President of the ECB.
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