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Silver Presentation Salver

The salver, which was bequeathed to the Bank of Canada by Lady Macmillan in 1967, is part of the artifact collection of the Bank of Canada Archives.
Photography by Mone Cheng, Innovacom, Ottawa.

Given technological advances and the widespread use of the Internet, various digital currencies have emerged. In most cases, Internet platforms such as Facebook and Amazon restrict the functionality of their digital currencies to enhance the business model and maximize their profits. While platform-based digital currencies could increase the efficiency of retail payments, they could also raise some important policy issues if they were to become widely used outside of the platform. Thus, it is important to closely monitor the evolution of these digital currencies.

I study the links between Canadian banks and non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) by observing co-movements in stock prices. Perceived interconnections increased before the COVID-19 pandemic but have since stabilized, with the strongest ties seen between large banks and NBFIs. The secured credit line extended to Home Trust, a non-bank mortgage lender that experienced severe funding stress in 2017, significantly reduced banks' risk exposure to NBFIs during this episode.

Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri talks about the Bank’s latest interest rate announcement and discusses how COVID-19 has affected savings and the outlook household spending.

We build a tractable New Keynesian model to study and compare four types of monetary and fiscal policy: policy rate adjustments, quantitative easing, lump-sum fiscal transfers and government spending. We find that tax-financed fiscal policy is more stimulative than debt-financed policy, and optimal policy coordination needs at least two of these four policy instruments.

This issue of the Financial System Review reflects the Bank’s judgment that high household indebtedness and housing market imbalances remain the most important vulnerabilities. While these vulnerabilities remain elevated, policy measures continue to improve the resilience of the financial system. A third vulnerability highlighted in the FSR concerns cyber threats to an interconnected financial system.

Over the past several years, the Bank for International Settlements has noted that Canada’s credit-to-GDP gap has widened and is above thresholds indicating future banking stress.

We provide a primer on the role of debt modelling in informing the sovereign debt issuance strategy and discuss how specific challenges faced by debt managers can influence model design decisions. These insights are supported by our experiences using the Canadian Debt Strategy Model to guide policy decisions.

Over the past year and a half, authors Andy Haldane of the Bank of England and Mark Kruger of the Bank of Canada have been developing a framework for the resolution of international financial crises that aligns incentives for all parties in a way that deals with the crisis and preserves the integrity of the international financial system. The framework is built on principles, not rules. It attempts to be clear about the respective roles and responsibilities of the public and private sectors. A central element in shaping private sector expectations is knowledge that the official sector will behave predictably. Constraints on lending by the International Monetary Fund are a key step in that direction. They ensure that private sector involvement is a crucial part of crisis resolution, and they help encourage debtors and creditors to seek co-operative solutions to a crisis. Characterized by constraints, clarity, and orderliness, the framework has the potential to reduce the incidence and cost of financial crises.