Central bank credibility is at all-time highs. As a consequence, we suggest, equities are near all-time highs too while gold is scraping multi-year lows. A change though may be in the offing with all three. Not today, nor tomorrow. But perhaps sooner than most think.

The International Monetary Fund has been forced to change the calculation of its most important interest rate after aggressive monetary easing around the world threatened to turn it negative.

Late on Friday, the IMF said it was introducing a floor of 0.05 per cent for the interest rate on Special Drawing Rights, its own form of international currency.

The Chinese central bank, People’s Bank of China, issued a press release announcing the authorization of direct trading between the renminbi and the euro on the inter-bank foreign exchange market.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced Friday that the British government intend to issue a Renminbi denominated bond and to use the proceeds to finance the government's reserves of foreign currency.

Osborne described this dialogue outcome as "a historic moment" and a statement of British confidence in the potential of the RMB to become "the main global reserves currency".

Ecuador is planning to create the world's first government-issued digital currency, with some analysts saying it may be a first step towards abandoning the country's existing currency, the US dollar - which the government cannot control.

The new currency was approved, and stateless crypto-currencies such as bitcoin simultaneously banned, by Ecuador's National Assembly last month in a new law.

Can central bankers succeed in getting global economy back on track?

Wall Street is starting to return to the financial innovation that helped extend the debt rally seven years ago before exacerbating the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The instruments are springing back to life as investors seek new ways to boost returns that are being suppressed by central bank stimulus.

"The ideal of every nation is to be able to print as much paper as it wants - but at the same time keeping inflation in check. Gosh, how do you do that? The best way - you lie about your inflation rate, which is exactly what most nations are doing. "

The Nobel laureate also went after what he called “a virtual Who’s Who of conservative economists and pundits,”* who published an open letter to the Federal Reserve chairman at the time, Ben Bernanke, warning that his policies risked “currency debasement and inflation.” He neglected to mention that they doubted the Fed asset purchases would achieve the Fed’s goal of promoting employment.

“Reality, however, declined to cooperate,” writes Mr. Krugman. By reality he apparently means “core inflation,” the element of the consumer price index that excludes items on which prices are rising. The actual debasement of the dollar — its collapse in value — did turn out to be breathtaking. Mr. Krugman doesn’t mention it, but the value of the dollar fell at one point to less than an 1,800th of an ounce of gold from the 1,368th of an ounce of gold at which it was when the conservatives wrote their letter.