Fed Chairman J. Powell, speaking at a Senate committee hearing, pledged to involve the public in a digital currency debate, and said he would need congressional approval to move the bill forward.
The assurance that a broad public debate will take place on the issuance of the digital dollar by the US Federal Reserve was given by the head of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, during the second day of his congressional hearing on Wednesday, February 24, 2021.
The reservations
Whenever an elected official in Congress asks US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about the issue of the digital dollar, the response he receives emphasizes the attention to be paid to this important monetary innovation and the risk inherent in stability of the US financial system, commented in a post by coindesk.com.
At the same time, he pointed out in a Reuters report, he pointed out that they will need special approval from Congress as the mandate or mandate of the Central Bank, which includes control over the circulation of the currency, which is the main instrument for the conduct of monetary policy.
The project
However, Powell went further than any of his predecessors during his hearing in the Senate Finance Committee, noting that the US Federal Reserve will be “engaged in a dialogue with the public” about the digital dollar in 2021, giving for the first time times a schedule for the central bank digital currency issue plan.
“This is going to be an important year,” Powell said of the digital dollar project.
Consultations
“This will be the year we work with the public quite actively, including some of the public consultations we are planning.”
Powell stressed that the Fed will not make decisions and then present them to the public, but will talk to the Americans about the consequences of the adoption of the digital dollar in the payment system and elsewhere.
“There are both policy and technical issues that raise very important questions,” Powell said.
“We will have a public debate; in the meantime we are working to address the technical challenges, and we are sharing our concerns with the rest of the central banks around the world,” he said.
He concluded that the central bank will be careful to design the digital dollar in a way that will not “undermine υγι the healthy functioning of the market”
