scholarly journals Central banking and the infrastructural power of finance: the case of ECB support for repo and securitization markets

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Braun

Abstract The pre-crisis rise and post-crisis resilience of European repo and securitization markets represent political victories for the interests of large banks. To explain when and how finance wins, the literature emphasizes lobbying capacity (instrumental power) and the financial sector’s central position in the economy (structural power). Increasingly, however, finance also enjoys infrastructural power, which stems from entanglements between specific financial markets and public-sector actors, such as treasuries and central banks, which govern by transacting in those markets. To demonstrate the analytical value of this perspective, the article traces how the European Central Bank (ECB), motivated by monetary policy considerations, has shaped post-crisis financial policymaking in the EU. It shows that the ECB has played a key part in fending off a financial transaction tax on repos and in shoring up and rebuilding the securitization market. With market-based forms of state agency on the rise, infrastructural entanglement and power shed new light on the politics of finance.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Braun

The pre-crisis rise and post-crisis resilience of European repo and securitisation markets represent political victories for the interests of large banks. To explain when and how finance wins, the literature emphasises lobbying capacity (instrumental power) and the financial sector’s central position in the economy (structural power). Increasingly, however, finance also enjoys infrastructural power, which stems from entanglements between specific financial markets and public-sector actors, such as treasuries and central banks, that govern by transacting in those markets. To demonstrate the analytical value of this perspective, the article traces how the European Central Bank, motivated by monetary policy considerations, has shaped post-crisis financial policymaking in the EU. It shows that the ECB has played a key part in fending off a financial transaction tax on repos and in shoring up and rebuilding the securitisation market. With market-based forms of state agency on the rise, infrastructural entanglement and power shed new light on the politics of finance.


Author(s):  
M. R. Saliya

The article discusses the issue of legal regulation of the digital currency of central banks. The experience of international organizations, as well as the fi rst steps in this direction from China, represented by the People’s Bank of China and the European Union, represented by the European Central Bank, are examined.


Author(s):  
Chiara Zilioli ◽  
Phoebus Athanassiou

The provisions on Monetary Union (MU), of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU or the Treaty), as well as the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (the Statute), are important in their own right, and are amongst those from which any student of the European Union (EU) can learn a great deal with regard to the EU.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manolis Kalaitzake

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a major scholarly revival of the topic of financial political power and a refocus on questions concerning democracy, elites, and inequality. Nevertheless, there remains a dearth in the literature regarding the precise nature of the political relationship between the financial sector and central banks. This is problematic given the sharp rise in institutional prominence enjoyed by central bank officials in the post crisis era and their fundamental importance in the governance of financial markets. As a corrective, this paper develops a provisional analytical framework through which the power dynamics between the financial sector and central banks can be fruitfully explored, specifically with reference to the European Central Bank. It does so by identifying four mechanisms through which financial actors potentially influence the policy choices of the European Central Bank – revolving doors, closed policy circles, capital flight/disinvestment, Too Big to Fail – and illustrates their operation empirically in the context of the bank’s organizational functioning and post crisis interventions. The paper illustrates how financial actors enjoy systematic advantages in the domain of central bank policymaking and provides significant evidence that the European Central Bank has been a key ally of the financial sector throughout the Eurozone crisis. The paper calls for a more extensive examination by scholars of the financial sector-central bank relationship as a means to clarify the precise scope of, and limitations to, contemporary financial political power.


Author(s):  
Herwig C H Hofmann

One of the European Union’s most ambitious policy projects to date is the ‘economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro’ (EMU, Article 3(4) TEU). The EMU’s two polices—the economic union and the monetary union—are an unequal set of twins. On one hand, the monetary union’s central elements are well developed: as an element of substance, the introduction of the euro as a single currency; as an institutional achievement, the creation of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) together with the European Central Bank (ECB) on the EU level as a highly independent body having the power to adopt a diverse range of measures. Additionally, the Treaties contain specific provisions on the goals and principles of monetary policy.


Author(s):  
Massimo Rostagno ◽  
Carlo Altavilla ◽  
Giacomo Carboni ◽  
Wolfgang Lemke ◽  
Roberto Motto ◽  
...  

The design of the European Central Bank (ECB) reflected a decades-long evolution of academic thinking and real-world experience concerning the optimal practice of central banking. In this chapter, we aim to unpack these influences and explain how they motivated both the drafters of the ECB’s statute and the economists in the national central banks who set the ECB up. We concentrate on the ideas that were dominant at the turn of the last century and the principles that were seen to constitute ‘good’ monetary governance, including the notion that monetary policy should focus primarily on price stability. We show how these principles were not only echoed in the EU Treaty, but also ‘hard-coded’ into the policy framework that, by the second half of the 1990s, had come to prominence in academic and policy circles: inflation targeting and its counterpart in econometrics, the New Keynesian model.


OASIS ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Marcin Roman Czubala ◽  
Mónica Puente Regidor

The European Central Bank (ECB) has received a lot of criticism for its too little, too late performance to ease market pressures during the economic crisis. At the same time, the ECB and the Federal Reserve (FED) have managed the new economic realities that have emerged in the international context differently. Despite the criticisms, the European Central Bank is the European Union institution that has assumed more control due to the new model of economic governance of the EU. Why did the Federal Reserve act so nimbly and quickly to calm the markets, while the ECB was so cautious in managing monetary policy? The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative analysis of the management of interest rates and other monetary policy measures undertaken by the Central Bank and the Federal Reserve during the economic crisis, as well as to understand the changes in the context of the ECB and the emergence of its authority within the European Union’s economic governance model since 2011. Thus, in order to carry out a scrupulous exposition, we will also limit the time frame of this study to the 2007-2014 period.


Author(s):  
Ilona Skibińska-Fabrowska

<p>The financial and economic crisis that has hit many economies in recent years has significantly increased the activity of central banks. After using the standard instruments of conducting monetary policy, in view of the obstruction of monetary impulse transmission channels, they reached for non-standard instruments. Among them, asset purchase programs played a signifciant role. The European Central Bank (ECB) launched the largest asset purchase programme (APP) of this type in 2014 and expired in December 2018. The aim of the undertaken activities was to improve the situation on the financial market and stimulate economic growth. The article reviews the literature and results of research on the effects of the program and indicates the possibility of using the ECB’s experience in conducting monetary policy by the National Bank of Poland.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-46
Author(s):  
Andrea Cecrdlova

The latest global crisis, which fully erupted in 2008, can have a significant impact on central banks credibility in the long run. During the last crisis, monetary authorities encountered zero interest rate levels and, as a result, started to use non-standard monetary policy instruments. The Czech National Bank decided to use a less standard instrument in November 2013, when it started to intervene on the foreign exchange market in order to keep the Czech currency at level 27 CZK / EUR. However, the European Central Bank also adopted a non-standard instrument, when chose a path of quantitative easing in 2015 in order to support the euro area economy by purchasing financial assets. The question remains whether the approach of Czech National Bank or the approach of European Central Bank in the crisis and post-crisis period was a more appropriate alternative. With the passage of time from the global financial crisis, it is already possible to compare the approaches of these two central banks and at least partially assess what approach was more appropriate under the given conditions. When comparing the central banks approaches to the crisis, the Czech National Bank was better, both in terms of the rate of interest rate cuts and the resulting inflation with regard to the choice of a non-standard monetary policy instrument. The recent financial crisis has revealed the application of moral hazard in practice, both on behalf of the European Central Bank and the Czech National Bank, which may have a significant impact on their credibility and independence in the coming years.


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