Bank of International Settlements. Today, the Bank of International Settlements released a paper on virtual banking providing insights on the use of information capital as a substitute for tangible capital. The paper argues that information capital, comprised of an enterprise’s or individual’s digital data footprint, can be used as collateral for obtaining credit, thus increasing access to credit by small and medium businesses and low income individuals.
While the paper uses the Hong Kong market as a case study, I believe that if US-based banks and fintechs embarked on the same initiative, the following legal issues may arise. Can information capital be used as collateral when borrowing for the purpose of purchasing foreign currencies? Does the use of information capital raise discrimination issues where biases are embeded in the artificial intelligence programming? Are existing laws sufficient for protecting enterprise or individual data privacy where such data is encompassed in information capital used as collateral?
The link to the BIS paper can be found here.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Yesterday after the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve announced that it would hold its interbank rate for overnight lending between 0 and .25%, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced that the reserve bank’s Open Market Trading Desk would increase its System Open Market Account holding of Treasury securities by at least $20 billion per month and its agency mortgage-backed securities by at least $10 billion per month. This reduced level of purchasing (down from a combined high of $120 billion per month at the beginning of the pandemic) will commence on 14 February 2022.
The link to the New York Fed’s announcement can be found here.
Interbank Market, Pakistan. The rupee held steady against the dollar at Rs176.98 but has been depreciating in value since 1 July 2021. See link to article here.
Foreign exchange rates as of 10:00 am EDT
EUR/USD=1.1282
GBP/USD=1.3500
USD/MXN=20.6258
USD/GTQ=7.5060
USD/NGN=414.7010
USD/GHS=6.1790
USD/VND=22,632.2000
USD/JPY=114.1900
USD/INR=74.8041
USD/BTC=0.00003
USD/ETH=0.00039
Source: OANDA
Alton Drew 
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