By Tadanori Yoshida, Nikkei Asian Review Beijing desperately wants to keep the yuan from depreciating further while also internationalizing the currency, but its actions don’t appear to help achieve either end. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange summoned currency market officials from commercial banks about a month ago, telling them not to give comments to customers that might … Continue reading
By Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk The Fed unsurprisingly chickened out from the much touted September hike. International conditions and a disapproval from Mr. Market was enough to unnerve an increasingly bewildered FOMC board. Less well known is the fact that the FOMC gave a strong, and unexpected, signal to the Pavlovian world of central bank front runners. … Continue reading
By Mark Mobius, Templeton Emerging Markets Group After months (if not years) of speculation and debate, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) has left the financial markets in a holding pattern once again, deciding to keep its benchmark short-term interest rate steady at near zero. In our view as investors in emerging markets, this isn’t necessarily positive news, … Continue reading
By Martin Feldkircher The United States Federal Reserve is the world’s most powerful bank, and its most powerful component is the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the twelve men and women who meet eight times a year to determine – essentially by setting interest rates – the monetary policy of the world’s largest economy. The last … Continue reading
By Jiaqian Chen, Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, and Ratna Sahay The Federal Reserve’s recent unconventional monetary policies seem to have affected emerging markets more than traditional policies. When the United States sneezes, the saying goes, the rest of the world catches a cold. This adage is not mere folklore. The recent global financial crisis drove home the importance … Continue reading
By Jonathan D. Ostry, Atish R. Ghosh, and Mahvash S. Qureshi There has been a remarkable increase in financial flows to frontier economies from private sources which, in relation to their economic size, are now on par with those to emerging economies (see chart). These large private flows can be volatile—responding strongly to changes in … Continue reading
By David Lipton, IMF Soon after the global financial crisis, with emerging market economies experiencing sizable inflows in the wake of quantitative easing, unconventional monetary policies, and widening growth differentials with advanced economies, the IMF embarked on a work program to help our member countries craft policy responses that would reap the benefits of financial … Continue reading
By Valentin Katasonov Capital flows started to move across borders many centuries ago. For a long time neither exporters nor importers of capital created any restrictions on the way. During the days of Great Depression in the 1930s some states introduced different capital controls (residency-based measures or outright prohibitions that a nation’s government can use … Continue reading
By Ratna Sahay and Preya Sharma IMF You may hear a sigh of relief from emerging market watchers as we approach the end of the year. Yet, against the backdrop of a prolonged period of low interest rates in advanced economies, huge capital flows, and a slowdown in emerging market growth, 2015 promises to keep … Continue reading