WASHINGTON—Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell continues to have to respond to rumors the central bank is “plotting” to introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
As CUToday.info has been reporting, the rumors of such a CBDC have been going on for some time, with members of Congress regularly announcing their opposition to a CBDC and even introducing bills that would ban such an offering.
“We haven’t come to a conclusion that we should propose … that Congress consider legislation to authorize a digital dollar,” Powell said again in recent remarks. “And it would take legislation by Congress signed by the president to give us the ability to do what we think of as a CBDC, which is really a retail CBDC, with the public. So, we’re just a long, long way from that.
On the ‘Frontier
“What we are doing—and I think what every major central bank is doing—is we’re trying to stay in the frontiers of what’s going on in digital finance,” Powell continued. “And it has many, many different areas. It has applications in wholesale finance, [and] in the payments system … these issues have become very front burner in the last five or six years. We need to be knowledgeable about all that. So, we actually do have people trying to understand things.
“But it’s wrong to say that we’re working on a CBDC and we’ve secretly got a lab here … and we’re just gonna spring it on Congress at the right moment,” Powell added. “We don’t. I haven’t at all, in my own mind, made a decision that I think this is something the U.S. should be doing. I just think it’s something we need to understand and we do have people who are keeping up with that as part of the broader payments landscape.”
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