IMF Charts USD Decline

The IMF today published a blog in its Chart-of-the-Week series portraying the declining status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.   As noted last week (see Client Report CBDC13), the dollar’s dominance is a core Congressional and FRB criterion when considering the need for a U.S. CBDC and this report may increase calls by some in Congress for more rapid action (see FSM Report CBDC4).  The post highlights the dollar’s dip below 59 percent of global foreign-exchange reserves in the final quarter of 2021, but also states that the euro, yen, and pound have not replaced it, nor has the renminbi, which now accounts for only a quarter of the shift from the dollar in recent years due in part to Russia’s holding of nearly a third of global renminbi reserves.

IMF Presses Central Banks to Go Green

A senior IMF advisor, Tobias Adrian, today argued that central banks should include sustainability considerations not only in their financial-stability and monetary-policy analyses, but also in their balance sheets.  This follows comments earlier today from President Lagarde that the ECB has an “open mind” about using the central bank’s lending facilities to foster the transition to carbon neutrality.

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