Am 21. Juni 1948 führten die Alliierten in Westdeutschland die D-Mark ein. "Die D-Mark steht bis heute für das Wirtschaftswunder der Nachkriegszeit, für Stabilität, Wachstum und das Vertrauen der Menschen, mit dieser Währung etwas kaufen zu können", schreibt Bundesbank-Vorstand Johannes Beermann in einem Gastbeitrag im Tagesspiegel anlässlich des Jubiläums. Heute setze der Euro diese Erfolgsgeschichte fort, so Beermann.

Benefits from the segregation of duties

Benefits from the segregation of duties

Claudia Buch underlines the benefits of a European capital markets union.

Crises tend to occur unexpectedly and are a threat to financial stability. In an op-ed published in the French daily newspaper Le Monde, Claudia Buch explains that, as a result of the financial crisis, banks need to hold more equity capital in order to be more resilient. As the Bundesbank’s number two writes, "Higher equity capital is the key to a resilient financial system".

Bundesbank Executive Board member Joachim Wuermeling is calling for the financial centres of the European Union to come together to work as a single networked financial platform. At present, their overall potential is spread across the entire continent, he writes in an oped for the Handelsblatt. In his view, a digital financial market union "would be a highly ambitious new project that would be worth the effort to make it work".

Bundesbank Executive Board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele considers Bitcoin a risky and highly speculative form of investment. "It’s also possible for Bitcoin holdings to be completely wiped out," he writes in an op-ed for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. In addition, he draws attention to Bitcoin’s high level of energy consumption, citing Bundesbank estimates that settling a Bitcoin transaction uses roughly 460,000 times as much electricity as a normal transfer.