SEACEN 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.

On 3 April, Özer and Ole spoke to Matteo Maggiori, Associate Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, about his research with Antonio Coppola (Harvard University), Brent Neiman (University of Chicago) and Jesse Schreger (Columbia University) on international capital movements (www.globalcapitalallocation.com) . Their aim was to shed light on how capital moves around the world. After painstaking data collection and careful analysis, the results present challenges to current orthodoxy. While official statistics capture the aggregate amount of cross-border capital flows, accounting for the ultimate nationality of the borrower rather than the location of the intermediary that does the borrowing matters considerably. For example, capital flows to emerging market economies according to their calculation are much bigger than previously thought. We discussed this point as well as some other implications of their findings.

In this Podcast, Geraldine Joseph, SEACEN Centre Senior Analyst, has a  conversation with Professor Dr. Didier Cossin, founder and director of  the Global Board Centre of the International Institute for Management  Department (IMD), Switzerland, and Professor of Finance and Governance  at IMD.  Professor Cossin is the originator of the Four Pillars of Board  Effectiveness methodology and an advocate of Stewardship. In his work  with Boards of both public- and private-sector organisations across the  world, Professor Cossin helps them enhance organisational performance  through strategy involvement; best-in-class decision-making; promotion  of board culture; and general governance, including board restructuring.  Over the course of this conversation, he will be sharing his  perspectives for effective central bank governance, based on his very  own 4-pillar framework.

In this SEACEN STEP UP TO LEAD Podcast, Geraldine Joseph, SEACEN  Centre Senior Analyst, engages with Mr. Rajeev Peshawaria, former  Executive Director of Executive Education, Asia School of Business,  Kuala Lumpur, who completed his term at end-March 2020. 

Rajeev’s prior  professional experience includes being the CEO of the Iclif Leadership  and Governance Centre, Kuala Lumpur, and the Chief Learning Officer for  both Coca Cola and Morgan Stanley. Apart from being a heavily  sought-after international speaker, he is the author of two  thought-provoking best sellers: Open Source Leadership; and Too Many  Bosses, Too Few Leaders.  Rajeev has been named as one of the Top 100  Global Thought Leaders for Trustworthy Business by Trust Across America.   In this podcast, Rajeev shares his nuggets of wisdom on what it takes  to lead effectively, based on his profound experience as a leadership  development consultant and a C-suite leader in a number of  organisations.

In this SEACEN Podcast, Glenn Tasky, Aziz Durrani and Mark McKenzie discuss COVID-19, financial stability and business continuity management (BCM) of central banks, stand-alone financial sector regulatory authorities, deposit insurance agencies (collectively, regulatory authorities), and financial institutions (FIs) themselves plays a central role.