Play with the interactive ECB balance sheet tool

For the full version, go here. The chart below only includes Eurosystem assets, not liabilities. It goes back just a few years. The full version goes back to 2000 and includes liabilities.

To remove a data series, either click on its legend label or the line on the chart. Remove as many series as you want to get a better understanding for how balance sheet items interact. This is in beta, so it may be a bit buggy. Expect redraw delays. ECB Balance Sheet Tool

(May take a second or two)

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A way to make anonymous online donations

Paying for things online usually means giving up plenty of privacy. But this needn't always be the case. Last night I donated to a local charity via their website and didn't have to give up any of my personal information. The trick for achieving a degree of online payments anonymity? Not bitcoin, Zcash, or Monero. I used a product created by old fashioned bankers: a non-reloadable prepaid debit card. (I wrote about these cards here and here ). Had I used a credit card or PayPal, all sorts of parties would have gotten access to my personal information including the site owner, the payments processor, my bank, the site owner's bank, the credit card networks, my partner, and many more. To get a good feel for how many different parties touch an online payment, check out this graphic by Rebecka Ricks, which shows how PayPal shares your information. A powerful visualization by @baricks showing how PayPal shares your data: https://t.co/vd8w8d8xn6 ht @akadiyala Due to Europe...

Buoyant Ireland

Nick Rowe is pessimistic , and points to one of the dreariest articles I've read to date on the Europe situation. I noticed that Ireland seems to be doing much better than the other peripherals. See the chart below. Its stock market is relatively strong, having outperformed markets in Greece, Italy, and Spain while keeping up to the German DAX. At the same time, Ireland isn't seeing capital outflows anymore. While Greece, Spain and Italy's TARGET2 balance is deteriorating, Ireland's has been improving for over a year. (Note that data is to end of April). ( click here for expanded version) What are the Irish doing differently? Is Ireland presaging how the other peripherals might be stabilized, or are they just lagging behind? Note: For one explanation of the difference, see this Allied Irish Bank report ( pdf ).

Shadow banks want in from the cold

Remember when shadow banks regularly outcompeted stodgy banks because they could evade onerous regulatory requirements? Not any more. In negative rate land, regulatory requirements are a blessing for banks. Shadow banks want in, not out. In the old days, central banks imposed a tax on banks by requiring them to maintain reserves that paid zero percent interest. This tax was particularly burdensome during the inflationary 1970s when short term rates rose into the teens. The result was that banks had troubles passing on higher rates to savers, helping to drive the growth of the nascent U.S. money market mutual fund industry. Unlike banks, MMMFs didn't face reserve requirements and could therefore offer higher deposit rates to their customers. To help level the playing field between regulated banks and so-called shadow banks, a number of central banks (including the Bank of Canada) removed the tax by no longer setting a reserve requirement. While the Federal Reserve didn't go as f...

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