The statutory missions of the Fed and the ECB and the issue of the US dollar

A vast literature is devoted to the institutional differences between the Fed and the ECB (Guttmann, 2008). It is not our intention to reignite this long-standing debate. However, the GFC is a unique time to examine the extent to which actual central banking practices have deviated from statutory missions since 2007–2008. In this chapter, the pragmatism of the Federal Reserve is examined against the policy stance of the ECB. We attempt to single out the NMC principles that have suffered the most since the outbreak of the GFC. Furthermore, the sheer magnitude of the first global crisis of financial capitalism in the twenty-first century inevitably calls for a re-examination of the problematic issue of the US dollar.