SEACEN Podcast The SEACEN Centre Podcast

It's a new year and the SEACEN Podcast starts our latest season with a brand new episode. Dr. Ole Rummel speaks with Dr. Rogelio Mercado to discuss the re-issued SEACEN Capital Flows Monitor, which is now available in the SEACEN ⁠website⁠.

They discussed the impact of high U.S. and domestic policy rates
on capital flows to Asia, as well as the latest trends and patterns of the region's capital flows and external positions.

Ole and Mark are back, this time discussing the biggest news of the past few days: the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a major financier for venture capitalists, tech start-ups and other Silicon Valley outfits, the federal government's response, and possible early lessons, if any, for SEACEN's stakeholders.

Disclaimer:The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of The SEACEN Centre. 

It's the first episode of a brand new season in 2023, and Mark McKenzie and Ole Rummel are joined by Prof. Leef Dierks, a guest to the Centre under the Visiting Scholar Programme.  He is Professor of International Capital Markets at the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences. Prior to joining the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences in July 2013, Leef was a Fixed Income Strategist at Barclays Capital and then Head of Covered Bond Strategy at Morgan Stanley.

In this episode, our hosts and Prof. Dierks talk about trust in Economic Policymaking and implications for the current situation, monetary policy transmission, the pitfalls and benefits of various inflation measures and discuss the Sacrifice Ratio. 

Mark McKenzie and Ole Rummel are joined by Prof. Hans Genberg, Professor of Economics at the Asia School of Business, and Prof. Steven Cecchetti, who is the Rosen Chair in International Finance at the Brandeis International Business School as they discuss inflationary outlooks around the world, energy prices, and discuss the global economic impact of latest world events.

Mark McKenzie and Ole Rummel are back on air, ahead of a special webinar on the same topic coming up on 25 March 2022.

Mark and Ole explore  the potential for digital assets and cryptocurrencies to lessen the  impact of sanctions and provide food for thought on steps that SEACEN members and stakeholders can take to scrutinize the use of digital  assets.

Some key questions:


What are sanctions?
Can digital assets and cryptocurrencies be used to evade sanctions?
What should businesses, including banks, in the SEACEN stakeholder space do to mitigate the risk?

Dr. Mangal Goswami, Executive Director of the SEACEN Centre, talks to  former Governor Már Guðmundsson about Iceland’s crisis and recovery and  the lessons learned. More generally they discuss the challenges facing  central banks in small, open and financially integrated economies  (SOFIES) due to cross-border financial integration and volatile capital  flows. Preserving monetary and financial stability in SOFIES requires  more instruments than generally deployed before the great financial  crisis (GFC), such as foreign exchange interventions, macroprudential  tools and capital flow management tools, that in turn gives rise to the  need to develop an integrated policy framework. Finally, they discuss to  what degree these lessons are relevant in the current crisis.

The  views of former Governor Már Guðmundsson on these issues are shaped by  his terms at the Central Bank of Iceland from August 2009 to August 2019  but also by his work at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as  the Deputy Head of its Monetary and Economic Department from 2004-2009.  He was a chairman of a regular meeting at the BIS of Governors from  small open economies 2017-2019.