Economists at Commerzbank analyze the Fed’s approach to CBDC (central bank digital currency).
The original idea of CBDC was to offer the public a digital form of central bank money. Powell declined that. That makes one thing clear: the accounts which banks hold with the Fed already constitute this castrated form of CBDC.
The fact that Powell continues to talk about wanting to ‘introduce’ CBDC is in my view a marketing gag that misleads the public who is not educated in monetary policy matters. In reality (i.e. in an economically relevant form) the CBDC project is dead.