Currency, Credit and Crisis: Central Banking in Ireland and Europe

Patrick Honohan, PIIE nonresident senior fellow and former governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, discussed his latest book, Currency, Credit and Crisis: Central Banking in Ireland and Europe, at the US launch event on October 15, 2019. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, PIIE senior fellow, offered his own insights on the policy response to the euro crisis.

The global financial crisis in 2008 brought central banking to the center stage, prompting questions about the role of national central banks and—in Europe—of the multicountry European Central Bank. In Currency, Credit and Crisis, Honohan provides a coherent perspective on the functions, limitations, and performance of a central bank in a small country by assessing the way in which Ireland's financial crisis from 2010 to 2013 was handled. The book offers a detailed analytical narrative of the origins of the crisis and of policymakers' conduct during its most fraught moments.

Honohan joined the Institute in March 2016 as a nonresident senior fellow. He was governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank from September 2009 to November 2015.

Kirkegaard has been associated with the Institute since 2002. Before joining the Institute, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector.