IMF Archives - Lion and Palm Tree

Fintech and Financial Stability

A critical look at IMF recommendations on financial stability concerns from Fintech and DeFi

Decentralized Finance — Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

Fintech and financial stability

Fintech is technological innovation in financial activities, or in other words, financial innovation aided by technology. This by itself is not new. The ATMs which made their entry in the late 1960s was also in this sense, fintech. With the rapid growth in crypto assets in recent years, and that of decentralised ledger technology (DLT), fintech has evolved and grown rapidly in recent years to provide traditional banking functions, including deposit taking and lending. Referred to as Decentralized Finance, or DeFi for short, it threatens to disintermediate banks from savers and borrowers, transform the traditional banking landscape, and threaten financial stability. The IMF flagged its concerns in the third chapter of the April 2022 issue of its biannual Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR). Continue reading “Fintech and Financial Stability”

Bank of Russia in War and Peace

How Bank of Russia and Russian Central Banking is coping with war and other political expediencies

Central Bank of Russian Federation Head Office building — Bank of Russia

War and Peace

War and Peace, Tolstoy’s enduring masterpiece, starts with a party scene. Set in the St Petersburg of 1805, the main characters are introduced here. Most of us would have read the ‘novel’ (Tolstoy did not call it one) in English. Lost in translation is the fact that almost the entire conversation, page after page, is in French. It was the preferred language of the Russian aristocracy. For Tolstoy, it was a literary device. He was making fun of the nobles of the day who spoke French to flaunt their exclusivity. He wanted to show how disconnected they were from core Russian values and the world around. Continue reading “Bank of Russia in War and Peace”

IMF’s Central Bank Transparency Code

When increased independence was being given to central banks across the world, especially in their conduct of monetary policy, and in countries implementing an inflation targeting framework, a key element was greater accountability of central banks, in which transparency and appropriate disclosures had a very important role. Transparency refers to the flow and accessibility of information from the central bank to its stakeholders and the public. They rely on that information to inform their judgment of the performance of the central bank and compliance with the central bank’s mandate. Transparency is also a key plank in the central bank’s broader governance and accountability framework. Continue reading “IMF’s Central Bank Transparency Code”

Global Financial Stability Report June 2020

A link to the June 2020 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) of the IMF can be found here. The salient points of the GFSR are as follows: Continue reading “Global Financial Stability Report June 2020”

IMF’s Global Financial Stability Review, April 2020: Markets in the Time of Covid-19

The IMF released yesterday the first chapter of its half-yearly Global Financial Stability Review (GFSR) for April 2020. The GFSR “provides an assessment of the global financial system and markets, and addresses emerging market financing in a global context. It focuses on current market conditions, highlighting systemic issues that could pose a risk to financial stability and sustained market access by emerging market borrowers. The Report draws out the financial ramifications of economic imbalances highlighted by the IMF’s World Economic Outlook.” Continue reading “IMF’s Global Financial Stability Review, April 2020: Markets in the Time of Covid-19”

IMF’s World Economic Outlook, April 2020: Effects of the Great Lockdown

The IMF released yesterday the first chapter of its half-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO) which is due only in May/June 2020. The world has changed significantly since the publication of the last WEO in January this year. The Great Lockdown, as the report calls it, will result in the worst recession since the Great Depression, shrinking the global economy dramatically by -3%, thus surpassing the effects of the Great Recession of a decade back. Continue reading “IMF’s World Economic Outlook, April 2020: Effects of the Great Lockdown”

Covid-19 pandemic and banking regulation

Tobias Adrian and Aditya Narain of the IMF, in their article titled “Maintaining Banking System Safety amid the COVID-19 Crisis” (31 March 2020), suggest how national band supervisors should respond to ensure continued trust and confidence in the banking system. Continue reading “Covid-19 pandemic and banking regulation”