Central banks, gold, and the new 'Global Playbook': Vania Stavrakeva on Bloomberg Surveillance

London Business School's Dr Vania Stavrakeva joined Bloomberg Surveillance for a wide-ranging, high-tempo discussion with Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney, moving briskly from global rate cuts to the deeper structural forces reshaping monetary policy and financial markets.

As central banks around the world edge towards easier policy, Japan standing apart, the conversation quickly turned to a more pressing question: not whether rates are coming down, but what economies are converging towards. Stavrakeva argued that advanced economy central banks are increasingly confronting challenges long familiar to emerging markets, from volatile term premia to rising concerns over sovereign debt sustainability.

In a sharp exchange on policy credibility, she highlighted the growing difficulty central banks face in controlling the long end of the yield curve, even as short-term rates are cut. Fiscal pressures, political constraints, and heavier reliance on short-term borrowing, she noted, are complicating monetary transmission and amplifying market volatility.

The discussion also touched on leadership at the U.S. Federal Reserve, where uncertainty around the long-run neutral rate is already feeding disagreement within the FOMC and spilling into global markets. Stavrakeva pointed to the unusually wide dispersion of views as a source of persistent uncertainty rather than reassurance.

Closing on gold’s surge to $4,500 an ounce, Stavrakeva linked investor behaviour to a breakdown in traditional safe-haven relationships. With long-term government bonds no longer reliably offsetting equity risk, she argued, gold has reasserted itself as a scarce alternative in a world marked by fiscal strain and structural change.

The result was a tightly paced, idea-driven conversation - economics at broadcast speed - with Stavrakeva engaging directly across macro policy, markets, and global finance.