I see it as a “strategic square”, the four parts of the system to be solved for delivering a European strategy: i) Cross border payments shortcomings, ii) BigTech’s global projects in the financial sector (including stablecoins), iii) The developing European Payment Initiative and iv) The potential Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). •  Indeed, the current digitalization triggers at least two important risks. o The risk (in red) that BigTechs, leveraging on their global reach, will build private financial 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  infrastructures and “monetary” systems, competing with the public monetary sovereignty since they will position themselves as issuers and managers of a universal “currency”. CBDC could then be issued but at the “backend” of this “currency”. o The symmetric risk (in blue) that some jurisdictions judge that the only way to respond to the otherwise overwhelming private payments’ wave would be to issue and spread on a domestic but also a global basis, “their” CBDCs. This could, if not sufficiently coordinated within the global financial community, set precedents as to the features of the CBDCs and their articulation with the private projects, with no say for other central banks. The way forward for Europe (in green) could be different and could rather disseminate central bank money in a retail form with the intermediation of the private sector and ensure interoperability between EPI and other non-European payment solutions. 2.
Much of this credit was used to buy houses and property prices began to soar. …because of overly expansionary monetary policy? There is a debate as to the role of monetary policy in creating this situation. The debate has mainly concerned claims that the US central bank had held interest rates too low for a number of years prior to the crisis. But other central banks, such as the European Central Bank, also held interest rates low during this period. It is not entirely clear what role monetary policy played – and plays in general – for the development of property prices and for risk propensity among economic agents. This is a subject that will probably continue to be discussed. However, on the basis of the information available at the time, there was no obvious reason for conducting another monetary policy than the one that was actually conducted. In the United States, for example, there was justified concern that the country might suffer the same deflation problems as Japan, and many other countries also perceived the threat of deflation as something to be taken very seriously. …as a result of a global savings glut? But there was also another and probably more important factor contributing to the low interest rates. Since the end of the 1990s the emerging economies in Asia, particularly China, and in the Middle East had experienced large current account surpluses, particularly in relation to the United States, but also to other western countries.