Just over 150 miles separate the Swiss cities of Basel and Geneva. For ten months, their distance has symbolized the gulf between the international regulators of the Financial Stability Board and the Libra Association, a corporate payments consortium led by Facebook. But this week marked a rapprochement,…
The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, delivered a scathing rebuke to Libra, the Facebook-led digital currency initiative, in the Financial Times this morning. Coming on the heels of several U.S. companies' withdrawal from the initiative after they received threatening letters from Senators Sherrod Brown and Brian…
The Zimbabwe government is back to its old money-printing tricks. As demand for Zimbabwe dollars dwindles, the government has ramped up restrictions on the use of substitutes. Late last month, as reported by Bloomberg News, "Zimbabwe’s government gave the central bank powers to impose civil penalties to…
What Are the True Financial Risks of the Facebook-Led Digital Currency? (Part III: National Security Risk) At yesterday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing on Libra, the digital currency project led by Facebook with 27 other partners, concerns about its potential to undermine U.S. national security featured prominently. Senators…
What Are the True Financial Risks of the Facebook-Led Digital Currency? (Part II: Monopoly Risk) Policymakers, in America and around the world, have for the most part responded to the announcement of Libra with skepticism, fear, and not a little bit of loathing. In my last post,…