US dollar credit is growing quickly outside the United States, especially in Asia, and in some economies it has outpaced overall credit growth. Cross-border sources of credit bear watching in view of their record of outgrowing overall credit in credit booms. Foreign currency and cross-border...

For now, effective capital controls allows the Chinese authorities to retain regulated deposit and lending rates, quantitative credit guidance and bond-market rationing. Relaxing capital controls would put these policies at risk. Reserve requirements can be extended to bank inflows from the...

The financial crisis has led to a reconsideration of banks' global business models. This special feature draws on the BIS banking statistics to distinguish between "international" and "multinational" banks and the implied geographical funding patterns, and to consider how the crisis put these...

At times of heightened global equity and bond market volatility, high-yielding currencies tend to depreciate while low-yielding ones tend to serve as a "safe haven". The whole spectrum of sensitivity to global volatility is represented among Asia-Pacific currencies.

Official holdings of US dollar reserves are partly invested outside the United States. These offshore investments do not strictly speaking finance the US current account, but do support the US dollar. Offshore holdings grow fast when intervention is large.

The liquidity of Asian local currency bond markets varies with overall size, turnover, issue size and dispersion of holdings. Recently, returns on higher-yielding instruments have led local currency bonds to outperform US Treasuries in aggregate.

Asian local currency bonds offer diversification potential in global bond portfolios.

Foreign exchange turnover evolves in a predictable fashion with increasing income. As income per capita rises, currency trading cuts loose from underlying current account transactions. In parallel, an increasing share of trading in the currency takes place outside the home country. At given...

Asian policymakers are giving consideration to allowing their currencies to be used by non-residents. If policy allows this and a robust fixed income market provides support, the Australian experience indicates that a currency can internationalise fairly quickly, particularly if it offers a...