This is the second in a two-part series on cross-border actions by central banks in the 19th century. The first, covering the period 1800-1840, primarily addressed two episodes in which the Bank of England transacted with the Banque de France in order to replenish the former’s gold reserves. This allowed the Bank to avoid…
In the 20th century, various new financial organizations were launched, from the Bank for International Settlements to the International Monetary Fund, in order to grapple with global monetary challenges. To some extent, these were products of 20th century problems, from facilitating war reparations to strained efforts to keep the ailing international gold standard alive. While…
Central banks have an array of responsibilities, the exact composition and the relative importance of which often depends on the country’s level of development. Some are tasked with ensuring a favorable market for government borrowing, others with maintaining a fixed exchange rate; some are mandated to ensure stable prices and others target low unemployment…
European integration may be a feat achieved despite considerable trials and tribulations. Of a financial sort, perhaps the two most notable of these are the crisis with the ‘Exchange Rate Mechanism’ in 1992-93 and the sovereign debt crisis of roughly 2009-15. The former perhaps presaged the latter. Yet, the problems with the Exchange Rate…
The economic disorders that succeeded the First World War, a failed restoration of the gold standard, a stock market bubble, the Great Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and the Second World War all occurred in the span of twenty-five years. The Bank of England was led by one man for almost the entirety of…
Dag Hammarskjöld was the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. He held the post from 1953 until his death in a plane crash while on a UN mission in Africa. He had also served as a senior civil servant in both the Swedish Ministry of Finance and its central bank. For the better part of…
The world changed when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. The event had consequences in financial markets as well and not only in Germany and the other belligerent countries. In neutral and warring countries alike, central banks and other public authorities addressed the sudden financial problems, most notably in foreign exchange and credit markets. In…
In the early 19th century, several new countries were born in Latin America. Many of these began to borrow in their own name from the capital markets, especially in London, and many found themselves bankrupt. Brazil was among the first group but not among the second, avoiding a fate that plagued much of the continent…
While increased state involvement in industrial affairs in Europe is typically identified as a defining feature of economic reality in the years after the Second World War, this involvement was a continuation of economic policies pursued by pre-war governments. Further, it wasn’t only ministers and bureaucrats that increasingly organized industry, but central banks as well.…
The Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, is one of the oldest banks in the world but it was not an entirely novel creation. Rather, it took up the responsibilities of another bank that had recently failed, the Stockholms Banco. That firm was the victim of adjustments to the coinage that interrupted the monetary…
