The United States election campaign is focused primarily on how much will the next president spend and the measures to combat coronavirus. Both issues should point to one conclusion: Unlike what candidate Biden wants to do, the next United States president should not copy the European Union.

As we face a second wave of coronavirus outbreak in Europe, we know that the March measures and aggressive lockdowns were a grave mistake.

The European economy is on the verge of a double-dip recession, the unemployment rate is at 8.1% compared to 7.8% in the United States but the European Union still has around 10 million furloughed jobs. Real unemployment, if we use the same calculation as in the United States, is closer to 11%.

The main central banks have been discussing the idea of implementing a digital currency. The rationale behind it escapes many citizens. Most transactions in the main global currencies are conducted digitally and one could say that the largest and most traded currencies, the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, British Pound, Swiss Franc, and the Yuan are already functioning as mostly digital money.

So, what are central banks saying when they talk about a new and different digital currency? It is basically another step in the effort to gradually get rid of physical currencies, with an idea of strengthening control of the payments and make it simpler to trace the use of a particular means of payment. It is also aimed at competing with global cryptocurrencies. Most will state that the reasons behind the idea of a central bank digital currency are efficiency and improving the transmission mechanism of monetary policy.