The energy price surge that started in 2021 is taking place as the world emerges with difficulty from the Covid-19 pandemic and faces the impacts of extreme weather conditions due to climate change. Both, aggravation of climate change and higher energy prices can significantly amplify poverty and inequality. As part of its price stability mandate, the European Central Bank (ECB) has an important role to play: managing inflation by supporting a clean energy transition in the European Union (EU).
The Bank of England’s policy toolkit needs urgent updating in light of the climate and cost of living crises. There are multiple interest rates across the economy that may need to be targeted separately to achieve monetary and financial stability and wider ecological and democratically defined goals. With the bulk of macroeconomic demand management relying on a blunt single interest rate tool, green targeted credit policy interventions would enable the Bank to better realise its price and financial stability objectives and could help it better reflect the importance of environmental sustainability and the transition to net zero, as recently mandated by the UK government.
Ausführungen zu den Forderungen an die Schweizerische Nationalbank
Prinzipien, Forderungen, Erläuterungen und positive Beispiele, wie die Schweizerische Nationalbank und die Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht die Klima- und Biodiversitätsziele der Schweiz unterstützen können.
Die aussergewöhnliche Geldpolitik des vergangenen Jahrzehnts hat der Schweizerischen Nationalbank (SNB) ein grösseres politisches Problem eingebrockt. Im Bemühen, den Schweizer Franken vor schädlichen Aufwertungsschüben zu bewahren, hat sie ihre Devisenbestände in kürzester Zeit mehr als verzehnfacht. Das hat ihr Vermögen derart massiv erhöht, dass es in zunehmendem Masse zum Objekt politischer Begehrlichkeiten wird; die jüngste Flut parlamentarischer Vorstösse belegt dies. Obwohl es sich dabei um einen reinen Nebeneffekt geldpolitisch motivierter Operationen handelt, steht dieses gigantische Vermögen zunehmend im Zentrum der öffentlichen Aufmerksamkeit. Das Papier analysiert den Aufbau des SNBVermögens und ordnet die politischen Forderungen in diesem Zusammenhang ein. Mithilfe einer stilisierten Bilanz der SNB analysieren wir die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten, das Vermögen und seine Erträge zu behandeln. Daraus leiten wir Empfehlungen ab, wie die SNB materiell und kommunikativ mit dieser Herausforderung umgehen könnte.
To ensure monetary policy does not conflict with the EU’s carbon neutrality targets, the European Central Bank must replace its current ‘market neutrality’ approach and rely instead on the EU taxonomy, a new briefing by Positive Money Europe argues.
The EU today faces two dramatic challenges: the COVID-19 Pandemic and the climate transition. The EU’s recovery plan for the pandemic falls far short of the estimated €2 trillion needed for achieving a sustainable recovery in line with the EU’s environmental objectives. This report from Positive Money Europe and the Sustainable Finance Lab explains how the European Central Bank can incentivize private banks to lend more money for green investments. By tweaking its Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs) programme, the ECB could make green lending much more affordable for small businesses and households.
With Eurozone governments spending huge amounts to fight the recession caused by Covid-19, the debt sustainability debate and how to manage it will only intensify in the coming months. This report, written by Sebastian Diessner, assesses the merits and drawbacks of different monetary finance proposals with the potential to revive the euro area economy. It seeks to structure the debate on how the ECB should do this by ordering, categorising and assessing the monetary policy options it has at its disposal to tackle the upcoming recession.
AfterCorona was launched by Dezernat Zukunft as a forum for thinking about long term, strategic challenges and opportunities in the context of the Corona crisis, particularly in the areas of fiscal, monetary, and economic policy. Starting in April 2020, around thirty thinkers from inside and outside academia met in four digital workshops to identify impasses and develop proposals to address them. The results are collected in this document.
Die vorliegende Langfassung des Positionspapiers vom Monetative e.V. schildert ausführlich die Notwendigkeit, die makroökonomischen Implikationen, die Ausgestaltung sowie eine mögliche Implementierung eines digitalen Zentralbankgeldes (kurz CBDC = Central Bank Digital Currency). Im Sinne einer übersichtlichen Diskussion werden in dieser inhaltlich umfangreichen Langfassung einige technische Begrifflichkeiten sowie Literaturkenntnisse vorausgesetzt.
The EU economy urgently requires innovative and bold reforms that reshape finance, so that it can help sustain our planet and enable us to thrive. In this policy briefing, co-written with the New Economics Foundation and 350.org, we offer policymakers a list of recommendations that, if implemented by the ECB, would constitute a successful strategic review from a climate justice perspective.
This report outlines why and how «helicopter money» should be deployed as soon as possible in the Eurozone. It summarizes the benefits of using helicopter money in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. It aims to help policymakers carefully prepare for the practical implementation of helicopter money. It clarifies how it can be implemented swiftly, legally, and democratically in the Eurozone context.
European monetary policy is strongly influenced by the «battle of ideas» between a tradition of rule-based politics and of individual liability on the one hand and a policy approach of flexible cost-benefit considerations on the other hand. Regarding interest rate policy, the tendency for long-run low interest rates is basically due to economic developments, and outside the reach of central bank policy. But central bank policy may have substantial additional effects. This is the case with respect to the low interest rate policy which the European Central Bank (ECB) has been pursuing to achieve price stability. However, the present definition of price stability needs to be more flexible to avoid negative economic side effects. The most dramatic monetary policy intervention were Mario Draghi’s famous words «that saved the euro.» Then, the euro had been threatened because, unlike, for instance, in the U.S.A., the U.K. or Japan, for every euro area country, public debt – also in euro – is debt in a foreign currency. So, at least in theory, every euro area country is exposed to the risk of sovereign default. Thus, for the euro area, there is a potential divergence between a set of rules, designed to prevent “moral hazard” on the one hand, and a need for intervention on the other hand. Especially a severe crisis would call for closer rule-based cooperation between monetary and fiscal policy. In this context, the concept of a «standing emergency fiscal facility» is discussed. -> Quelle: Österreichische Gesellschaft für Europapolitik. Autor: Ewald Nowotny
With the impending ‘death of cash’ and the rise of digital currencies (such as Bitcoin), there are strong arguments for central banks to start issuing “digital cash” – an electronic version of notes and coins (also known as a central bank digital currency). But this raises a number of questions: how would central banks get new digital cash into the economy, and how would the public use it? What would the advantages be? And would there be any impact – positive or negative – on financial stability? -> Source: Positive Money UK. Author: Ben Dyson & Graham Hodgson