Why the coming recession could move the Federal Reserve to ditch greenbacks for new digital dollars:
The Federal Reserve has never been more famous than it is today. It drew praise, and ire, for its handling of the financial crisis a decade ago, and the extraordinary measures it took subsequently to stimulate the U.S. economy have made it an important driver of financial markets. Meanwhile, President Trump has made its chairman, Jerome Powell, a household name by frequently criticizing the central bank’s policies on Twitter and to the press.
A central-bank digital currency could work much like the mostly bank-issued digital money Americans use today, with some key differences. First, it would be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government and, therefore, risk-free. The local bank that manages your savings account could fail at any time and the dollars in your account would disappear. A Fed “e-dollar” would persist as long as the U.S. government does.
The eurozone hasn’t fared much better despite imposing negative interest rates on large banks, as it’s suffered two recessions since the financial crisis. “The only way we can transact with central-bank money today is to use reserve notes, but digital payments are now the norm,” said Ousmène Jacques Mandeng, an economist at the London School of Economics who spent much of the past two decades working for financial institutions including Credit Suisse and UBS. “If you wanted to buy something on Amazon, you can’t pay with central-bank money.
While regional Fed banks have produced research that points to significant economic benefits from a central-bank digital currency, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors declined to comment for this story. In addition, the board’s public comments have revealed a skepticism on the potential benefits to consumers. In a May 2018 speech, Fed Gov.
Todd Keister, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, echoed that concern. “Monopoly power concerns are important,” when thinking about central-bank digital currency, he said. “There is a natural monopoly in payment networks. What’s to stop Visa V, +0.55% and Mastercard MA, -0.24% from raising their fees? Enabling an alternative for transacting digitally is really important.
Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, said in an interview with MarketWatch that maintaining a public role in currency, and constraining the monopoly power of potential issuers of digital money and current players in the payment space, is a reason for the Fed to start taking the issue seriously now. “In paper currency, the Fed has a legal monopoly — nobody else is allowed to do it,” he said. “It’s called ‘counterfeiting.
That system fell apart during the Civil War, with Congress passing legislation in 1864 that enabled the Treasury Department to issue paper currency, not convertible to gold or silver, that was deemed legal tender for debts public and private. The law was necessary to help finance the Union’s war effort and set in motion a series of statutes that ended state-chartered banks and created a national banking system, wherein federally chartered banks distributed U.S. dollars backed by gold. U.S.
“Central banks should be technology-neutral,” he added. “If [the Fed] allows banks to settle their transactions in central-bank money, why shouldn’t individuals who trade in tokenized assets have the same access to this risk-free currency?”While the Federal Reserve is unlikely to issue e-dollars anytime soon, it will surely be watching digital-currency experiments undertaken by central banks around the world.
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