REINVENTING BRETTON WOODS COMMITTEE
Bangkok Economic Festival 2026
Dialogue of Continents
12–16 October 2026 · Valia Hotel, Bangkok. On the margins of the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings
CONTEXT
The IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings return to Bangkok for the first time since 1991, a year that marked the apparent triumph of globalization, the expansion of global trade, and the start of Asia's extraordinary economic transformation. Not only had we reached the end of history, but in the early 1990s, there was a wide belief that markets would converge, that international and multilateral institutions would only grow stronger, and that economic growth would be shared.
Thirty-five years later, these assumptions have been shattered by the global financial crisis, the pandemic, and more recently a wave of geopolitical fragmentation that calls into question the multilateral, rules-based order itself. The Bangkok Economic Festival convenes at this inflection point. In this moment, policymakers are seeking answers to fundamental questions over 1) what must change in the architecture of money, in the governance of institutions, in the relationship between states and markets, and in the management of artificial intelligence as a systemic force, and 2) how to respond to shocks to the global economy in the next decade with institutions that are ill-equipped to do so.
Six Thematic Threads
Macro & Monetary Policy: The End of the Playbook?
The 2026 Middle East energy shock delivered the first major test of post-pandemic monetary frameworks against a classic negative supply shock, with central banks splitting sharply in response. The track's monetary-policy session is anchored on the Warsh review: in June 2026 new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh launched five independent task forces, co-led by external experts, to reassess how the Fed sets and explains policy, with initial findings due
this autumn. The Festival asks how the Warsh review will reshape the Fed's framework, and how it compares to the ECB's and Bank of England's own rethinking in a world of more frequent supply shocks. The track also addresses the global imbalances controversy: with an AI investment wave pulling capital in one direction and an energy and security shock pulling growth and the cost of capital in the other, a dedicated high-level panel will look at where the debate over current-account and savings-investment imbalances currently stands, and what it means for exchange rates, capital flows and the reserve currency system.
Money & Digital Finance: An Architecture for a Fragmented World
The Festival treats digital money and technology sovereignty as a thread running across the full week rather than a single session.
Monday's leadership roundtable, Sovereignty under Pressure, addresses the issue head on by looking at two key questions: what does sovereignty mean for central banks, supervisors and international institutions when money, data, technology and service providers operate across institutional and national boundaries? And which mandate, from critical capabilities and monetary policy to supervision, financial stability, critical-infrastructure oversight and crisis response, require enduring institutional control versus credible exit arrangements?
Tuesday's AI and Quantum Computing session, Two Clocks, One Mandate, extends the conversation to the build-versus-buy choice for scarce technology capability, asking which capabilities central banks must own internally, which can be shared, and how vendor neutrality and strategic optionality can be preserved.
Wednesday's Money Track roundtable, chaired with BIS, in turn, examines the target monetary architecture, how central-bank money, tokenised deposits and stablecoins should interact to preserve singleness, competition and innovation, and which issuer, reserve, redemption and interoperability requirements are non-negotiable.
Thursday's session on Digital Money, Stablecoins and Monetary Sovereignty turns to the roughly $320bn stablecoin market and its implications for dollarisation, bringing together central bank, Circle and PBOC perspectives Friday's Dialogue of Continents roundtable closes the thread by asking whether CBDCs, fast payment systems and regulated stablecoins can coexist within an interoperable international monetary system and, crucially, without deepening fragmentation.
AI as a Systemic Force: The New Macro Variable
AI is treated not as a technology topic but rather as a structural macroeconomic variable. It is seen as a permanent positive supply shock whose interaction with energy insecurity, sovereign debt, and monetary transmission remains under-theorized and under-governed.
Global Governance: Reforming the Multilateral System
The Global Governance track via the Triple Agenda side event, with ICRIER and CGD, updates a landmark report on reforming multilateral development banks to address climate, development and debt simultaneously; the Sovereign Debt Roundtable focuses on the state of restructuring practice; and the session on China and the Multilateral System explores the tension between China’s posture as a self-described developing country and its rapidly growing role as a funder of the institutions it helps sustain, from the country’s IDA contributions to its own platforms in the AIIB, the NDB and the newly agreed SCO Development Bank.
Sovereign Debt, Background: Debt Relief in Historical Perspective
The sovereign debt thread draws on an ongoing FES/IISD/FDL research project, which investigates why political appetite for meaningful debt relief remains out of reach, even where debt burdens are unsustainable.
It traces how historically creditor and debtor interests, prevailing ideas, and institutional arrangements have either enabled or blocked international debt initiatives. The project’s main finding is that debt relief becomes politically possible only when key actors see it as aligned with their own interests, when it is seen as legitimate, and when institutions exist to deliver it. These insights offer a historical yardstick for the Festival's debates on the Common Framework, comparability of treatment, and deeper relief.
Dialogue of Continents — Asia, Europe, Central Asia
Friday closes the Festival with RBWC's flagship Dialogue of Continents format, bringing together Asian, European and Central Asian policymakers for five back-to-back sessions. A cross-continent roundtable on interoperability will ask which monetary, legal and regulatory properties must remain common as cross-border payment architectures diversify.
The EFSD Labour Research curtain raiser presents findings on labor markets across Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Informal G20 Dialogue consolidates Central Asian and Middle Eastern perspectives on connectivity, critical minerals and financial cooperation ahead of the 2026 G20 Summit. The Advancing to High-Income side event, with ADBI, draws lessons from Europe's middle-income transitions for Asia's frontier economies.
And the day closes with an invitation-only roundtable on economic prospects, geoeconomics and artificial intelligence, taking stock of the week and of the Annual Meetings themselves.