Opinion

Bring back Glass-Steagall?

Suddenly, everybody is talking again about separating merchant banking from commercial banking. Ideas that a few months ago might have been dismissed as crackpot - bringing back a version of the Glass-Steagall legislation - now look as if they were ahead…

Taking Santiago forward: a 12-point plan

Sven Behrendt, an associate scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, presents a blueprint for a 12-point action plan on how the International Working Group of Sovereign Wealth Funds could move forward with the industry code of conduct…

Payments systems and the crisis

Ron Berndsen, who heads the payments oversight department at the Dutch central bank, assesses the impact of the crisis on the financial "plumbing".

A setback for European payments

Terry Dirienzo, product and marketing director for Experian Payments, a consultancy, bemoans a French suspension of work on the Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa).

National regulators must revise Basel II

National regulators need only make a small change to the Basel II framework to avoid future government recapitalisations. It is essential that they do so, say Samuel Sender and Noel Amenc, two researchers at France's EDHEC business school.

Why we must say no to nationalisation

In the UK, nationalisation is increasingly being advocated by many experts as a solution to the banking crisis. Such a step would be a disaster for the UK and the City of London, argues Robert Pringle, the editor-in-chief of Central Banking journal.

Mary Schapiro: Here Comes the Sun

In recent months, the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) has been on the receiving end of severe criticism. Mark Berman, a former SEC lawyer who leads CompliGlobe Ltd, a London-based consultancy specialising in financial regulation and…

London's lifelines lack coherence

The dangerously mixed messages underlying the British government's rescue attempts threaten to derail efforts to secure stability, argues Robert Pringle, the editor-in-chief of Central Banking journal.

A note from El Salvador

The dollarisation of El Salvador's economy has brought relative calm to the Central American economy. But it will not be able to completely avoid the collateral damage from a slump in the United States, says Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied…

What's behind the fear of intervention?

Central banks' unwillingness to defend their currencies' value through foreign-exchange intervention despite abundant dollar reserves highlights a fear of intervening. Such a fear should lead central banks to review why they hold reserves, says Ousmene…

Obama win promises to lift some of the gloom

Barack Obama's clear victory in the US presidential election opens a new chapter in America's history. The positive impact of this powerful signal of change on the economy and on central banking should not be underestimated, says Marco Annunziata, the…

The tragic mistakes of the central banks

As the print dries on the European and US bank nationalisation plans and praise is sung for the financial statesmanship behind these, it is important (at least for posterity) to draw attention to the fact that there was an alternative route back to…

Worldwide cuts are not enough

The coordinated cuts by six of the most powerful central banks could prove a useful step in improving market sentiment. But only if it is coupled with more action at both a national and international level, Avinash Persaud, the chairman of Intelligence…

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