US Treasury issues a general license waiving key Iran oil sanctions until August 21, 2026

Thank you, Beth Anne, and I would like to welcome everyone to the fifth installment of this Conference on the International Roles of the U.S. Dollar.1 Over the years, this gathering has aimed to bring together different perspectives to better understand the forces shaping the dollar's central role in the global financial system. Last year's conference, for instance, focused on global investor allocation to U.S. safe assets and their liquidity in a time of geopolitical and technological change. This year, we are here to discuss the implications of financial innovations, especially digital assets such as stablecoins, for the international roles of the U.S. dollar. One striking feature of these discussions has been how rapidly the underlying questions have evolved since the first conference in the series. While the traditional drivers of the central role of the U.S. dollar in the global monetary system—from the size, strength, and depth of the U.S. economy and financial markets to trust in U.S. institutions and rule of law—remain critically important today, the environment around these drivers is changing rapidly. Technological innovation is increasingly altering how households and businesses interact with dollars, whether it is through holding new types of assets or through changes to the payment rails by which dollar-denominated assets are transferred, intermediated, and settled. Distributed ledger technologies and tokenized assets, such as stablecoins, are creating new channels for global dollar intermediation that operate alongside, or sometimes in conjunction with, traditional banking and payment systems. As a result, the dollar's international role is also evolving. The private sector is moving rapidly to expand access to dollar-denominated assets, innovate in new financial services, and explore potential business opportunities that perhaps did not make sense with legacy technologies. In doing so, there will be complements to the traditional financia Fed's Waller: Dollar’s global role changing with technology Fed Governor Waller did not comment on the economic or monetary policy outlook in his remarks.

In June 2026, DG ECFIN’s flash estimate1 of the consumer confidence indicator2 continued its recovery in both the EU (+1.2 percentage points (pps) compared with May) and the euro ...

Suspected Yen Intervention USD/JPY makes a quick move lower. Eyes on intervention USD/JPY make a quick move lower after touching a session high. The pair briefly traded above 161.90 only to plunge promptly to 161.20. The dip has been bought though, with the pair back up to 161.65. Japanese officials have repeatedly warned that they're watching markets closely. On Friday, USD/JPY posted its highest weekly close in 40 years and the end of the Iran war doesn't appear to be helping. With today's earlier move higher, the June high of 161.80 broke but the July 2024 intraday high of 161.99 is still intact, albeit barely. These are going to be dicey times in yen trading as the Ministry of Finance is put to the test.