Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | The US dollar has officially ruled the international monetary system since the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. No other currency has been able to challenge the dollar notwithstanding the ups and down of the US economy both in terms of growth but also inflation. Notwithstanding its overall dominance, things are changing. This is particularly true for the waning share of the US dollar in the...

Syp Wynia (Atlantic Sentinel) | The Netherlands should consider exiting the euro, argues Lex Hoogduin, a former director of the country’s central bank. Hoogduin, now a professor of financial markets at Groningen University, points out in an interview with Wynia’s Week that the nineteen countries that share the euro have broken almost all the rules they agreed in the 1990s, when the currency was introduced. High inflation and low interest...

Luis Alcaide | The world is gradually moving towards a multiple reserve system. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF notes that when the euro made its appearance, the dollar accounted for 71% of foreign exchange reserves. In the last quarter of 2020, dollar reserves held by central banks had fallen to 59%, the lowest share in the last 25 years. The complaints in 1960 from the then French...

In the medium term there are reasons to believe that the euro should appreciate very gradually over the coming year, boosted by the reduction of EMU–US interest rate differentials and the increased demand for euros to acquire the new European asset known as coronabonds.

Philippe Waechter (Ostrum AM) | The ECB has just launched a new asset purchase operation worth 750 billion euros over the period up to the end of 2020 at least. The purchases will relate to public and private securities which are eligible for the asset purchase program (APP) previously implemented by the ECB. The weight of each state in this buying program will be that of each state in the capital of the ECB. The press release suggests a lot of flexibility in interpretation.

David Kohl, (Chief Currency Economist, Julius Baer) / US growth superiority continues for longer than expected. The economic headwinds caused by measures to contain the spreading of the coronavirus are stronger for the Eurozone than for the US and support safe-haven currencies. We have adjusted our 3-month euro forecast down while being slightly more constructive for the JPY.