Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker said on Wednesday it is “inevitable” that central banks will issue digital currency. He also said the United States should not be the nation to lead such a move. He had been asked about the Fed’s creation of “FedNow,” its own real-time payments system. The comments were first reported by Reuters.

“Frankly I don’t think we should be the first mover as a nation to do this,” Harker said at a St. Louis community banking conference. He noted the dollar’s status as world reserve currency and underscored the need for experimentation and tests when it comes to such technology. Read More

More Quantitative Easing (QE) could be coming to the US and Eurozone as soon as the end of the year. The European Central Bank is preparing to cut interest rates and start a new round of bond purchases come Autumn to stymy economic uncertainty amid a global economic slowdown. The Federal Reserve has indicated that it too is considering aggressive asset purchases.

ECB Bank president Mario Draghi has made it clear that all options are on the table for the ECB, which oversees an export-driven European economy that is currently enduring a considerable slowdown due to the German economy’s poor economic indicators, tensions between Brussels and Italy over the latter’s budgetary policy, as well as the threat of a No Deal Brexit. Read More

Top Federal Reserve policymakers might cut interset rates if trade tensions continue to get worse.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his No. 2, Richard Clarida are watching disputes between the US and its trading partners. The next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee takes place June 18-19, with Clarida noting that the Fed “can’t be handcuffed” by market pricing. Read More

Most Americans go through their lives thinking the Federal Reserve is just yet another governmental institution, no more interesting than the DMV or Post Office. Read More