With growth improving but inflation still below 2%, Japan’s central bank is likely to maintain its ¥7tn-a-month quantitative easing programme beyond April 2015. Japan’s GPIF government pension fund is looking to hold more domestic and foreign equities – adding to Japan’s hoped-for economic recovery.

On 24th July 1914, the world’s stock exchanges shut their doors. A century on, Richard Roberts recounts the events from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the suspension of the gold standard.

Mojmír Hampl, vice governor of the Czech national bank, warns against the ‘highly addictive drug’ of monetary financing of governments. He is responding to Meghnad Desai and David Marsh's article Options for QE Exit, in which they argue that the Bank of England could reverse its accommodative policy by transferring UK government bonds back to the Treasury and then cancelling or converting them.

A new development bank launched by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa could present a challenge to the ‘Bretton Woods twins’, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But several weighty operational issues must be resolved first, which raise considerable questions over its effectiveness.