Audio Explainers
Spoken-word analysis — listen while you commute or multitask.
Reserve currency persistence
Why the dollar's reserve role survives even when its issuer's economic share falls. Liquidity, settlement habits, and the coordination problem of switching currencies. We also unpack the role of central-bank weaponization risk, the euro's fragmentation problem, and what slow diversification away from the dollar actually looks like in COFER data.
Carla Norrlof on SWIFT — messaging is not money
The University of Toronto political scientist on why the 2022 SWIFT cut of Russian banks was less consequential than popular framing suggested. Messaging, settlement, and correspondent banking — three layers of the dollar-payment stack the policy debate keeps merging, and why the renminbi's real challenge runs through settlement infrastructure not communication standards.
Adam Tooze on the Fed as world central bank
Author of *Crashed* on why the 2008 dollar-swap-line architecture made the Federal Reserve the lender of last resort for a system it does not regulate. Covered interest parity, the March 2020 dash for cash, and what the FIMA facility extends to emerging markets — and what it does not.
The post-dollar question — what local-currency settlement actually changes
We unpack what PAPSS, mBridge, and the now-defunct INSTEX really do — and don't do — to the dollar's role in global finance. Settlement plumbing versus unit-of-account anchoring, and why those two functions don't unwind at the same pace.
Eswar Prasad on renminbi internationalization — the structural gap
The Cornell professor and former IMF China chief on why China's growing share of global trade invoicing has not translated into reserve-currency status. The four functions of international money, the post-2022 Russia-China bilateral settlement acceleration, and why open capital markets remain the binding constraint Beijing will not deliver.