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We compare the Federal Reserve’s asset purchase programs with those implemented by the Bank of England and the Swedish Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank’s reserve expansion program.

On this occasion, I would like to touch on the Bank's contribution to good economic performance, our emphasis on openness and transparency, and our role in promoting domestic and global financial stability. I will then comment on the Bank's view of current economic conditions and discuss any issues you may wish to raise.

Over the recent period, many emerging-market economies and commodity-exporting nations have experienced unprecedented growth and accumulated substantial amounts of foreign exchange reserves. The management of these foreign reserves has led to the emergence of important financial actors: sovereign wealth funds (SWFs).

This paper uses discrete-choice models to quantify the role of consumer socioeconomic characteristics, payment instrument attributes, and transaction features on the probability of using cash, debit card, or credit card at the point-of-sale.

Freedman and Engert focus on the changing pattern of lending and borrowing in Canada in the past thirty to forty years, including the types of financial instruments used and the relative roles of financial institutions and financial markets. They examine how borrowing mechanisms have changed over time and consider the challenges facing the Canadian financial sector, including whether our financial markets are in danger of disappearing because of the size and pre-eminence of U.S. financial markets. Some of the trends examined here include syndicated lending, securitization, and credit derivatives, a form of financial engineering that has become increasingly important in the last few years. They also study bond and equity markets to determine whether Canadian capital markets have been hollowed out or abandoned by Canadian firms and conclude that the data do not provide much support for that view.

This article provides answers to several key questions about Canadian monetary policy. First, what is monetary policy? Second, why does the Bank of Canada focus on the control of inflation rather than other macroeconomic variables? Third, how do the Bank's actions influence the rate of inflation? And, finally, how can monetary policy deliver genuine and significant benefits to society?

Given this failure, the G-20’s agenda to reshape the global financial system is comprehensive and radical. The coming weeks and months will be pivotal to its success. The time for debate and discussion is drawing to a close. Policymakers now need to decide and to implement.

The Bank of Canada (the Bank), through its Standing Liquidity Facility (SLF), provides access to liquidity to those institutions that participate directly in the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS).

Systemically important payments systems are systems that, because of the size or the nature of the payments they process, could trigger or transmit serious shocks across domestic or international financial systems if they were insufficiently protected against risk. This article describes the overall framework of core principles developed for the design, operation, and oversight of such payments systems. The article reviews the role of the task force established to develop the core principles and examines the core principles themselves. It also examines the role of central banks in overseeing major payments systems and in applying the core principles to them. The focus is on the Bank of Canada's oversight responsibilities under the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act and on Canada's systemically important payments system—the LVTS.