The sharp swing in Treasury prices that took place on October 15, 2014, led the Federal Reserve Board, in conjunction with the Treasury Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to create a Joint Staff Report and to host a conference on the structure of Treasury markets at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) in October 2015.1 The staff of the four agencies and the FRBNY compiled transactions data across both Treasury cash and futures markets and analyzed the factors that could have caused the rapid rise and subsequent reversal in Treasury prices in such a short span of time.
Based on my own quick survey, there are 22 central banks currently upgrading their banknotes or, at least, have done so in the past few years. A slightly larger number of central banks – 23 – are underway with or have recently completed upgrading their printing and/or banknote processing centres.