Although firms, especially manufacturers, have been stepping up their business fixed investment, an excessive build-up of capital stock has not so far been observed in the economy overall. Since firms are very careful in choosing their investment projects, business fixed investment as a whole has, despite recent acceleration, generally been kept within cash flow and the pace of increase in capital stock is moderate.
The announcement of Facebook and other big companies, such as Mastercard, Visa and Spotify, to create Libra might be considered a quantum leap. Are we witnessing the birth of a new, global payment system allowing billions of people without bank accounts to become financially integrated? Will consumers benefit from very cheap cross-border payments?