This paper presents a model in which safe assets are systemic because they are the medium of exchange for risky assets. It connects the literature from banking and finance on safe assets to the monetary literature on alternative monetary systems involving commodity money, interest bearing money,...

This paper presents a model in which safe assets are systemic because they are the medium of exchange for risky assets. Like commodity money, these assets are costly to produce and have some intrinsic value, resulting in (a) non-neutrality and (b) overproduction. Quantitatively, the welfare...