About the tracker

A country-by-country record of the rules that steer savings into government debt or hold returns below inflation, each backed by the law that imposes it.

What the tracker is

The Financial Repression Tracker lists the laws, regulations and official decisions through which governments borrow cheaply from their own savers. It scores each jurisdiction on a 0–100 index, shows the measures behind the score, and keeps a toolkit of the instruments governments have used, past and present.

It is built for savers, researchers and journalists who want to see the rules themselves rather than a summary of them: every measure links to its sources and quotes its legal basis.

What financial repression is

Financial repression is a set of policies that steer savings into government debt or hold the return on savings below inflation: mandated holdings of government bonds, interest-rate caps, central bank purchases of government debt, limits on moving money abroad and tax rules that favor government bonds. The effect is a quiet transfer from savers to the state.

The standard reference is Reinhart and Sbrancia, “The Liquidation of Government Debt” (opens in a new tab) (IMF Working Paper, 2015), which measures how controlled interest rates combined with inflation reduced government debt after World War II. The toolkit’s postwar playbook walks through five instruments of that era, and the FAQ answers the common questions.

How the index works

The index runs from 0 to 100. 80% comes from the rules a country has in force and 20% from what its markets show. Where there is no market data, the index is the rules score alone.

Rules (80%)

Each measure belongs to one of nine categories and has a severity from 1 (mild or narrow) to 3 (strong and broad). One measure fills part of its category: 25% at severity 1, 50% at severity 2, 80% at severity 3. Each further measure fills that share of what is still empty, so more measures always add something but each adds less, and a category never goes past its points:

Category	Points
Captive demand	16
Central bank financing	16
Capital controls	16
Rate caps	14
Prudential sovereign bias	10
Directed credit	10
Tax incentives	7
Real asset restrictions	6
Transaction taxes	5

Markets (20%)

Real policy rate: the policy rate minus inflation over the past year. +2% or higher scores 0, -5% or lower scores the maximum, in a straight line between.
Captive holders: the share of government debt held by the country’s own central bank and domestic banks. 0% scores 0, 60% or more scores the maximum.

What counts

The index counts measures in force. The outlook also counts measures that are enacted (passed and published, but applying from a later date). Proposed, under-discussion and repealed measures are shown but never scored. EU member states inherit the EU-wide measures on top of their own. Each country page breaks its score down by category and by measure.

How the data is built

Measures. Each measure was researched from official and expert sources. 562 of its 564 sources were opened and the measure’s figures found in them; the rest were seen only in search results because the site blocks automated reading, and every measure has at least one opened source.
Legal citations. Each measure cites the law, regulation or official decision behind it, with the provision, the official link and a short verbatim quote: 561 citations in all.
Independent checks. Every quote was checked against the official page: by script where the page could be read automatically, otherwise by a separate reviewing agent, or by transcription from a scanned gazette. Citations that no one could open, or that a reviewer rejected, are not published; 13 measures currently show none, either because they are voluntary arrangements or because their official texts could not be opened.
Updates. Indicators refresh automatically every Monday. The measures are researched and checked by hand; the current set is dated 2026-10-14.

Citations back the core rule, not every detail in a description; that detail rests on the measure’s sources. Laws change, so confirm against the linked text before relying on an entry.

Data sources

The market and economic figures come from these publishers, under their own terms:

BIS central bank policy rates and consumer prices (opens in a new tab): Real policy rate (policy rate minus inflation over the past year). Free to use provided the BIS is cited as the source.
IMF DataMapper (World Economic Outlook, Fiscal Monitor) (opens in a new tab): Government gross debt and the primary balance, as a share of GDP. Free reuse with attribution to the IMF; commercial reuse needs the IMF’s permission.
IMF sovereign investor base (Arslanalp and Tsuda) (opens in a new tab): Who holds government debt: the central bank, domestic banks, other domestic investors and foreigners. IMF terms: free reuse with attribution; commercial reuse needs permission.
World Bank World Development Indicators (opens in a new tab): Real interest rate, used when the BIS figures are more than a year old. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).
Chinn-Ito index (KAOPEN) (opens in a new tab): How open a country is to capital flows, by law. No formal licence; the authors ask users to cite Chinn and Ito (2006).
FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (opens in a new tab): The US dashboard: Fed funds rate, Treasury yields, inflation, federal debt and the Fed’s Treasury holdings.

The 29 items of further reading on the country and toolkit pages come from the IMF, the World Bank, the BIS, CEPR, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. The tracker is not affiliated with any of these publishers.

Coverage

16 jurisdictions, 263 measures (211 in force), covering 42 countries on the map: the European Union counts once as a jurisdiction and its rules apply to all 27 member states.

Scores partly reflect how many measures have been researched for each jurisdiction: euro-area members other than France, Italy, Germany and Spain have no national entries yet, and EU members outside the euro area have no market data. Compare scores with that in mind.

Independence and no advice

The tracker is an independent project. It carries no advertising and sells nothing. It describes rules and data; it does not give investment, tax or legal advice, and nothing on it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any asset. For decisions about your own money, consult a qualified adviser in your jurisdiction.

Get in touch

Follow and message the tracker on X at @fin_repression (opens in a new tab), or email contact@financialrepression.cc.

Corrections

If an entry is wrong or out of date, tell us on X or by email, naming the page and, if you can, the official text or source that shows the correct position. Each report is checked against the official text before anything changes. Corrections are made on the page itself, the measure’s data is updated, and the citation goes through the same quote check as every other.