ECB’s Lagarde Wonders Whether US Dollar's Attractiveness Can Last

14 October 2025

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Tuesday questioned whether the attractiveness of the US was a permanent feature of the global financial architecture.

Speaking to CNBC, Lagarde said, “There are many movements at the moment that are counterintuitive. If you look at what’s happening in Japan, it’s the same. If you look at what’s happening to the dollar, it’s the same.”

“So, we need to suss out why it is happening, and this is a matter that will be repeated over the course of time, whether it’s the symptom of something that goes way deeper than … FX movements, and whether the attractiveness of the dollar is something that is here to last unchallenged,” she said.

Europe had to “take our own internal market very seriously to make it more investor-friendly,” she said.

Change in Europe would be slow, and indeed there was already “momentum in that direction,” she said. “The difficulty of the exercise is to reduce the burden and the bureaucratic aspect and the overlayers and overlapping of bureaucracy and regulations, while at the same time making sure that we have a financial sector that is resilient.”

Asked whether French bond yields were worrisome, Lagarde noted that the ECB was monitoring all developments, “but there’s nothing disorderly at the moment.”

Subject to criteria and conditions, the ECB had the necessary instruments to deal with adverse developments, she reminded.

In other comments, Lagarde said that the high gold price “translates as a sign of uncertainty, anxiety.”

“It’s a reflection of the current unpredictability and uncertainty,” she added.