Haku

Payments are a basic function in society, the lifeblood of economic activity; if disrupted, this could bring society to a total standstill. It matters how payment services and the systems executing these services are ...

Since the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, the traditional means used by central banks to influence economic activity and inflation have changed significantly. Once nominal risk-free interest ...

The monitoring of financial markets is an important part of the preparation of monetary policy decisions and the monitoring of their implementation, as information from the financial markets provides clues on the state of ...

Monetary policy implementation in recent years has largely centred on asset purchase programmes and long-term refinancing operations. As a result, the balance sheets of the Eurosystem national central banks have grown ...

The US economy has recovered from the financial crisis. The unemployment rate in the United States has already fallen to the level prevailing before the financial crisis, and inflation has risen to a point close to the 2% ...

Under the ongoing purchase programme, the Eurosystem's securities holdings had already grown by about EUR 2,300 billion by the end of 2017. The ECB Governing Council has announced that it will continue net asset purchases ...

Monetary policy strategy specifies the key principles that a central bank adheres to in pursuit of its objective. The primary objective of the ECB is to maintain price stability. Central banks’ operating environment has ...

In order for banks to obtain credit from the central bank and payments to be transmitted smoothly, adequate collateral is required. Collateral protects the central bank against the credit risk associated with the counterparty. ...