Central Banks
Likely euro adoption puts Estonia on positive watch
Fitch Ratings predicts Estonia will join Euro after Tallinn publishes debt figures
Bank’s Haldane moots structural change to recover social costs
Bank’s executive director for financial stability labels banking pollution “a real and large social problem”; says officials must look at architecture of financial system to resolve it
“Radical reforms” must be considered: UK lawmakers
Head of influential group of parliamentarians says British government wrong to rule out root-and-branch reform; favours contingent capital and subsidiaries to lessen risk of systemic collapse
Three academics join China’s Monetary Policy Committee
The People’s Bank of China calls on three scholars to join rate-setting board
Warsh acknowledges Fed’s quasi-fiscal action
Governor suggests Fed’s crisis-fighting measures may have tested the boundaries of central bank’s ambit
Norges Bank’s Gjedrem on rate decisions
Svein Gjedrem offers cautious outlook for growth following rate decision last week
IMF: global inter-connectedness aggravated recession
IMF paper shows global interconnectedness increased output volatility during recession as trade-dependent economies were worst hit
SNB tackles too-big-to-fail
Report by the Swiss National Bank suggests countries biggest banks will need to downsize
RBA warns of inflationary pressures from emerging markets.
Reserve Bank of Australia highlights inflationary threats from Asian economies in financial stability report
Rate round-up
Israel hikes but raft of others cut, including Hungary, Russia, South Africa and Romania
Philly Fed: banking sector returns to profit
Report for fourth quarter notes bank failures also dropped
IMF: Bolivia foreign reserves adequate
Research charts developments since 2005
$500 billion reserve drain made crisis worse: IMF’s Ferhani
Deputy director says IMF research shows central bank reserve managers withdrew $500 billion from deposits at commercial banks during crisis
Gold could play solid stability role
World Gold Council's George Milling-Stanley pushes for Basel III and SDR to be gold plated
Russian central bank “lacks capacity” to handle assets
Russian sovereign fund management chief says new agency will take debt and asset responsibilities over from central bank, Russian reserve stash severely depleted by financial crisis
Norges Bank director pushes for better pricing of risk
Norges Bank director Arlid Lund discusses how to prevent the next crisis and where the risks lie
Central banks, not debt will kill growth: economist
Independent economist Roger Nightingale charges that debt on its own is not incompatible with growth, but raising rates will kill growth
IMF calls for originators to have more exposure to tranches
Study shows that exposure to securitised loans does not imply risk-neutral behaviour
Turkey tests new policy on checking accounts
Study by Turkish central bank rejects new policy to increase payment fees for checking accounts
Fed: macro models ignored lower bound of yield curve
San Francisco Fed constructs an augmented version of macro-finance model following financial crisis
ECB in about-turn on collateral rules
Move reflects concern over Greece; Trichet says graded haircut system set to be introduced