Simon Johnson: belief

Transcript context

…What’s the likelihood and time frame for a dollar central bank digitally managed currency? Is it ever going to happen? I think it’s pretty far off, Tyler. Look, you mentioned money market funds a moment ago. One thing that could happen, of course, is people might decide to take their uninsured deposits, which are a claim, a liability of a bank, and you may have different views about the sustainability or vulnerability of that bank, and you could buy short-term government debt through a money market fund, and then you could just sit there and wait to see what happens. If you had a central bank digital currency, I think a lot of people would’ve migrated, if they weren’t already holding that — they would’ve migrated from the bank account into that central bank digital currency, and that would be a big shift in the ability of the banks to fund their loan book. That could have serious and difficult ramifications in a period of stress like this. I think the complications of a central bank digital currency are more apparent this week than they were a couple weeks ago. So, we’re just going to live with privately issued stablecoins, and that will be what we use? Or do we somehow abolish all attempts to make money programmable?…

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