 Now let me go over and introduce our three panelists. Let me bring up everyone's bios. So Dana Criacopolou is the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the Official Monetary Financial Institutions Forum. Her team ensures that Amphif's economic research agenda continues to put the organization at the forefront of understanding of the economic and strategic issues facing global public policy and investment institutions such as central banks, sovereign wealth funds and public pension funds. Prior to joining Amphif, she served as a managing economist at the Center of Economics and Business Research, economic advisor to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and as an official at Greece's central bank. Michael McMahan is Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Oxford. In April 2019, he was appointed to a four-year term as a member of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. Among other roles, he is a research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research and Deputy Director of the Newfield Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Policy. He previously worked at the Bank of England for three years and where he was a Euro area economist doing both analytical and forecasting work. Last but not least, David Roach, Founder, President and Global Strategist with the Hong Kong-based consultancy independent strategy. David has forecast some of the major turning points in global investment, including the demise of the Soviet bloc, the Asian Financial Crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. His work on liquidity and the credit crunch is explained and discussed at length in his 2007 book, New Monetarism Co-written with Bob McKee. Prior to founding independent strategy, David served as head of research and global strategist at Morgan Stanley, a global investment bank. So with that, we look forward to opening contributions from each of our panelists. Danae, over to you. Thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure to take part. Good morning, everyone. Great conversation so far with Bill. Good to see you again. I think when we think about the role of central banks in this crisis, I like Bill's statement of I wouldn't start from here if I were you. And I remember what we were discussing with central banks before the pandemic started, all the conversations we had at similar roundtables in 2020, 2019. And even before that was what will central banks be able to do when the next crisis comes? We were talking about central banks having exhausted their toolbox. We were talking about them running out of options. We were talking about all these issues that Bill has raised today as well in terms of this is not sustainable. They are running into the reversal rate where their policies and their support policies are becoming less effective at the margin where the negative side effects are becoming more pronounced. So we were having these kinds of discussions. And I was very surprised to see that in this crisis they've actually been able to come up with even more innovation and become still the central players in terms of how the financial system has responded to the pandemic. We were talking before about central banks having been the only game in town and that not being sustainable. And still, even though their balance sheets as a share of GDP were very high, even though interest rates were at the lower zero bound in many cases, they have still been able to come up with new instruments, with new measures in the case of the ECB, for example, with the pandemic emergency purchase program with TLTROs and other lending measures that they've been able to put forward in the financial system. I think also the major central banks have acted in a way that has supported the global financial safety net through repo lines and activating swap lines with other central banks from emerging markets. What we've seen differently in this crisis as well has been that some of the emerging market central banks are now taking some of these unconventional measures. So you're starting to see quantitative easing programs in EMs as well. So this is becoming much more pronounced. I think for me, the big question going forward is that, yes, it has been good as Bill also acknowledged that central banks have reacted this way in this crisis so far because you do need a functioning financial system to have a functioning economy. But at the same time, it worries me that we are seeing the financial system going one direction and the real economy going another direction. And that disconnect is not something that can be sustained for very long. We have managed to sustain it for now and central banks have managed to avoid what has been a real economy crisis due to the pandemic becoming a financial one as well, which is what the role is to preserve financial stability. There is a shock in the real economy to try and protect the financial sector from that. But you can't have that disconnect for very long. So the question is, will the real economy adjust to financial markets in the sense of seeing some growth, seeing some recovery, and maybe that is something that is where the way it's going now with a vaccine or will the financial markets adjust to the real economy challenges and we may see a financial crisis as well. So what could trigger that? Again, it's something that we were discussing a lot before this pandemic hit, even in back in 2016, thinking would a change in policy in the US, would a Brexit, would the Euro area crisis trigger that recession on a global level? We haven't seen such a crisis since 2008 and it hasn't happened. And even with the pandemic, we didn't see financial markets reacts in this way. So the question of what could trigger that, I think we've been proven wrong about this, that financial markets seem to be well protected even in the face of all these real economies shocks that we've seen. I think to give some credit also to central banks, yes, there are all these issues of, are they doing the right thing? They are creating some negative side effects. I think it's important also to consider the counterfactual, what would have happened without them? And it's very hard to imagine the situation where they didn't act because, yes, they do have their price stability mandates, which I agree with Bill to some extent that maybe that is misguided in terms of that fixation on price stability and how their understanding and their models are structured. But if they hadn't intervened at all or if we hadn't seen these expansionary measures and these support for monetary policy, where would we be? And that goes back to what Bill was saying also about fiscal policies not acting or maybe the government's fault that central banks have had to take these measures. I think another big differentiating factor in this crisis is that we've actually seen the central banks no longer be the only game in town. We've actually seen this policy move as well, especially in Europe, where we've seen some very big structural changes with the recovery fund, for example, and it has taken this crisis for this to happen and changes that should have been in that direction before as well. On the question of where do we go from there and the debt buildup that we've seen, the unwinding of balance sheets as well, I think on the mechanics there, we recently wrote a piece about that with my colleagues as well. It's on the website for the Bank of England specifically, but I think it applies to other central banks as well, like kind of how irredeemable central bank reserves are and the interest on reserves that may become more expensive if and when interest rates rise. I think thinking about an inflationary scenario as they'll also set it up, set it out, is that we are hearing about, well, central banks may be forced to keep interest rates low so that there are no issues with a government's debts going forward, but at the same time, if we were to see interest rates rise, that would most likely happen in a scenario where the economic conditions around that mean that there is higher growth. It's only really in a low growth, high inflation scenario where we would have that problem. And at the moment, the economic fundamental conditions like demographics, globalization and so on do not really point to that, although I accept that it's something that could get out of control quite quickly. I think another big question for the next day for central banks is also the question around then preserving their independence, and that has been raised a lot as well by central bankers themselves saying that we don't want to keep doing what we're doing because the more the financial system becomes dependent on us and more unconventional measures we have to take, even though they have now become conventional and that takes us more into political territory, also the negative side effects, the unintended consequences have distributional effects in some cases and that becomes more political. I think it's important to think a little bit about what central bank independence is and where it came from. And when you read the economic literature of the 1980s of having a technocratic institution be independent and manage monetary policy, the underlying principle there was that we want central banks to be able to resist the temptation to introduce stimulus when it's not economically justified and when it is politically motivated. And we are in very different situation now where it's become almost the opposite of governments pursuing austerity policies and leaving the central banks to push the expansionary policies at least in the pandemic time. But that's really the kind of, what is at the heart of central banks independence that ability to be able to say no to stimulus when it's not justified. And I think as long as central banks do what's right for their mandate, what the economic conditions demand even if that is the other direction. So pursuing stimulus when some governments may say that that's not needed then that is still preserved and enhances their credibility and their independence because it's what independence is about. So I think that the fears that we've seen from central banks are perhaps overblown in that sense because central bank independence is not as much about that. I think the other issue for central banks that is coming up is also their action on non-financial risks. So climate change is one of them and that could be perhaps a whole other panel. But I think again, that's where we're seeing some resistance in terms of central banks becoming more political entities or losing their independence if they're going into action such issues. And I think we have to think of central banks as powerful institutions with powerful tools and understanding what are the risks that they may see in their own pain in the financial sector both in terms of preserving financial stability on those environmental, social, other types of risks is not just climate change. I think a lot of central banks are expanding their operations and understanding and research beyond that, for example, looking at the impact of environmental changes not just climate. And also what the impact of the financial sector is on those factors as well. And again, that is a risk channel which central banks can see that it's not about taking on a more political role to become the climate change fighters but it's kind of understanding what are these factors that impact the financial system as Bill was saying it is a complex economy more complex than their current models account for and that's something that needs to be updated. So that would be the way I would see that. And I think they will still have a very central role in there in addition to the challenges of debt and unwinding their balance sheets as well which is becoming more and more difficult. But I think ultimately when you look at the accounting questions and how the system is set up it's something that is on the surface that at least could be resolved in this way. So I'll stop there and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Just a couple of questions in relation to Bill's point about deflation not always being a terrible thing. And in Europe, the recent pre-pandemic QE program that was launched because of missing the inflation target for a number of years. Looking at that from this perspective do you think that was a proportionate response to undershooting of inflation or was it a big experiment that wasn't necessary for something that wasn't really a problem? I think the deflationary scare that we saw in the Euro area and it was very close to that and it could become a very persistent problem. I think at the same time the ECB was right to address that in the way that it did at the time. I think also looking at it kind of looking ahead they have also indicated that they will take a symmetric approach in terms of their price stability mandate and the inflation target that they have which I think is also the right way to look at it that if they've undershooted the target for quite some time they are prepared to also tolerate a bit above target inflation for some time. I think that the risk that inflation could get out of hand quite quickly is important but I think they also have to take the symmetric approach for at least some time. Okay, great. Thank you. So with that let's go to our second panelist, Michael, over to you. Okay, thanks very much for having me and really enjoying the discussion so far. I don't know if I'm gonna disagree that much with everybody but I will a little bit and since I do have the role on the fiscal council I will stress in advance since we're on the record that these are my views and not those of the or not necessarily those of the fiscal council but yeah, so I often refer to myself as a semi-reform central banker. Most of my research is about central banking. I used to work in central banks and I still spend a lot of time hanging out in central banks. So nonetheless, I actually I think what I do agree with and maybe relative to Bill's comments maybe I'm gonna take the more generous view that he alluded to, I think when we look back I think history may recall that the central bankers at some point became the adults in the macro policy room at a time when perhaps unjustifiably with history but maybe genuinely scared because of how markets were potentially gonna turn against them in the sovereign debt market. Fiscal policy went from expansionary at a time when the economy was very weak to contractionary and that forced the hand in some ways of central bankers to do what they've done. So I am taking that more generous view. So when I think about the current crisis I absolutely believe that fiscal policy is the right tool. So one of the questions that came in during Bill's talk was by Patrick Flynn about essentially boils down to a question about who determines whether a response should be more monetary or more fiscal. Well, the answer is we do have an overarching body. It's the democratically elected government in some respects. They at least at Ireland of course being slightly more difficult given it's part of a monetary union. But in most countries, the central bank has independence but its mandate typically comes from the government. And certainly my time when I was at the bank it was very clear that the bank was reacting to the situation it saw before them but not trying to influence fiscal policy. And I always thought that was the right split. But equally, if the government has decided and has a democratic mandate to do something whether that to us or with hindsight looks like the wrong choice, central banks should react to that. And that's what I think they did. So I'm taking the more generous approach in that regard. So this time I definitely think fiscal policy has stepped up a lot more and I think it's the right thing to do. I think the policies that we need to react to crises like the pandemic and now I will sound a bit like many of our fiscal assessment reports. The policies should be timely, targeted and temporary. And these are exactly policies that fiscal policy is much more nuanced. It's not as broad brush a tool. It can really address sectors or regional aspects of things like a pandemic. And we know there have had very big differential effects across sectors or across regions or across even parts of the income distribution. So I think absolutely fiscal policy is the right thing. Now, I also agree with Danai's point about the key concern I would have for central banks is how we protect central bank independence. So as much as I think that fiscal policy needs to be the tool that responds, I do think central bank independence is a difficult thing to deal with particularly as central banks have expanded their toolkit. They did it in the financial crisis. In some ways, a little bit contrary to what Bill said, one place where I think it is, but we started in a better place was the fact that central banks had already fought a lot of the issues regarding things like doing asset purchases. So if you think of the ECB, it was an incredibly difficult political maneuvering to be able to take some of the actions that have been very useful at protecting the financial system. But I agree that starting with a situation where central banks have largely run out of ammunition is not an ideal place to enter this crisis. But again, so long as fiscal authorities are willing to step up, I think that's useful. I think one of the big risks, and this is a big risk to central bank independence is, again, I think maybe the period of central bank independence of the sort of what was often called the nice years, the non-inflationary constant expansionary years, we built up this view that there was a real dichotomy between monetary and fiscal policy. Whereas fiscal policy and monetary policy are not as separate as are certainly when we teach them in undergraduate or even graduate macro and micro courses we would think of, monetary policy always has a kind of fiscal element to it and independence helped us separate those, but the experimental to use Bill's term, the experimental tools that we've been using like QE, asset purchases, et cetera, have grade that distinction quite a bit. So there are elements actually of monetary policy that we saw in reaction to the financial crisis that look essentially like broad brush fiscal actions but carried out by an independent monetary authority. And that's worrying for independence reasons, right? Because you want the decisions that are being made in this regard to be done so with some kind of democratic backing and strong accountability to the public. So let me point out a few of what I think are the big challenges going forward. So in protecting central bank independence, a big push has been towards more engagement and discussion of central by central banks with the general public. And this is a really difficult area and I've done plenty of work in this. Myself and Andy Haldane and Alistair McCawley have a paper which talks about the three E's which talks about the need for explanation, engagement and education. These are incredibly difficult, all three of them. Most of the public don't really care beyond how it affects them. So they certainly don't wanna pick up the inflation report and sort of read into that. But equally, if you look at how central banks have tried to engage on social media, I would say they have had sort of lukewarm engagement so far and I think the bottom line and the big challenge for them is it's incredibly difficult to take on politicians whose day to day job and career has been about engaging the public and winning the hearts and minds. But I think if we are gonna have a grown up adult discussion about what should the central bank remit be? How much of it should be price stability? And I remain, I will be for the maybe true to my central bank union origins. I believe central banks should still target price stability but I also believe we need to have an adult conversation about why we think that's the case. I don't think some of the models that Bill mentioned if we make them more chaotic or whichever sort of form of non-linearities you want to bring in, I don't think they take away from the fact that at least over some long run, nominal policies affect the sort of nominal quantities in the economy. I'm yet to be moved from my, I guess neoclassical position on that. But I do agree with Bill in the sense that I think central banks should engage more with these varying types of models, particularly on the financial side actually, where I think the non-linearities are particularly interesting. So let me just finish with one last sort of thing. You know, I think in some of this debate, the ECB may have actually been accused of, or has been often accused of not putting price stability enough to the heart of what it's doing if you look at the criticism that it has faced. So I don't think it's simply a fact that they have been blindly looking at price stability and that's been the problem. I think in some cases it's been difficult to look at price stability not enough, if you will. I think the idea of restructuring the debt is very interesting. But again, I wanna go back to the democratic accountability point. If we're going to do debt restructuring, we really have to have that adult conversation that wins support, public support for this. And while we're having that conversation, I can see that all the incentives are to be in a good position so that you look like you've well behaved so that your debt can be restructured first. Because the one thing that won't be popular on a sort of more general public sense is the idea that people who built up huge debts and particularly financial institutions that built up huge debts, but equally governments that built up huge debts suddenly get this free ticket. And I think that's the sense in which this is a fiscal action absolutely and therefore needs to be undertaken by fiscal authorities. I think in the Eurozone, I think getting public support for that is going to be incredibly difficult. But I do agree that these are exactly the conversations that when you're in a hard place, you should be having those discussions. While we wait for that, let me conclude with my main point, which is central bank's role in this crisis should be the supporting role. It is the link to the financial sector. It should support the financial sector. It should focus on financial stability and its goal of price stability. But if we wanna think about more growth either from the demand or the supply side, I truly believe that fiscal policy is the right set of policies to explore. I'll stop there. Okay, thanks Michael. Just a follow-up question, targeted timely and temporary, you mentioned, targeted timely fine, but what about temporary? Government spending programs wants to introduce a very difficult to unwind for political reasons. Do you have any concerns about that? Oh yeah, we have plenty of concerns. Certainly those who've been following the fiscal council's view on this and I will try and relate that the way we have recently. In the most recent budget, there are I think very necessary increases in spending unrelated to COVID, somewhere in the region of five to eight billion, which to people in larger economies may not seem like a lot, but in Ireland is a fairly chunky increase, certainly larger than this sort of usual discretionary fiscal increases that we would see in a budget. So probably by twice what we would normally see. And there's no problem with that. These are in areas that the election last year or earlier this year pointed to COVID. It feels like it's a different year, but obviously it was this year. The public support was clearly in favor of those things. So no problem on that front. The worry we had was that these are increases in spending for which there is no plan on how to fund them. And so I think you're right, Dan. I think yes, when we increase, the ratchet effect is large. It's easy to give out. It's harder to take away. But again, that's where having the sensible adult conversation. And this is one of my frustrations, which I wrote about in 2017 related to the austerity debate that had taken place in the UK. I mean, I just thought the debate that we often have on fiscal policy is rarely one of choices. Politicians like to give away, but they don't like to point out that there is a cost to some of these things and we have to pay for that. And depending on, again, which side of the political spectrum people fall on, there's always an easy option for financing these, none of which are actually easy. So if you're on the right, it's often, oh, we can fund all of this by cutting spending, but no service will drop because we'll have efficiency gains. Well, we know that's not true. Equally, the sort of the accusation in the UK of the magic money tree, that also doesn't exist. I think just accepting that we do have to make choices and these are not always easy choices. The nice thing about a crisis, if I can say that, is that that discussion doesn't have to take place yet. So, you know, we are in a point where certainly on the fiscal council, we support the increase in deficit and the support that the fiscal authorities have provided for the economy. But somewhere down the road, these conversations will have to be had. That's where the temporary and targeted are really important. And yeah, I agree, Dan, temporary is hard, but it still has to be part of the conversation. Great, Michael, thanks. Over to you, David, and thanks to our speakers for taking the time this morning. But in your case, particularly thanks for allowing this event to eat into your beginning of your weekend. It's Friday evening over where you are. So, David, look forward to your financial market participant perspective sometimes. Well, as you said, Dan, my job is to deal with central banks in a time of COVID or plague and financial markets as opposed to policy and central banks and so on, which I would dare to deal with too. But given the seven minutes I've got, let me say, first of all, set the background. Central banks basically can channel credit to the real economy or they can inflate asset prices by buying them, printing the money, buying the assets or causing others to do so. The degree to which this has gone on is enormous. The expansion of central bank balance sheets since COVID started, which I put in January, is it's gone from 35% of GDP to 54% of GDP from $15.2 trillion to $22.8 trillion. Now, let me set the framework for that for a minute and then make some points. It is a no-brainer to say that the more money you print, the higher asset prices will go. It is also true that the smaller the impact of printing money on the real economy, the greater will be the impact on asset prices. And it is true that the smaller the impact on inflation, the more asset prices will boom. And finally, and most important, perhaps, the more capital is underpriced by central bank, underpriced for risk. It makes mediocre returns on dodgy assets, poor quality assets look relatively good. And of course, all asset prices will rise, but in particular, the price of poor quality assets will rise most. Now, let me turn this into seven points that I want to make about where we are now. And they're all about financial markets looking forward because in a sense, there's nothing to be gained for looking backwards. First of all, vaccines and COVID. It is likely that by the end of next year, we'll have something like herd immunity in the rich economies. We possibly, given that we could quite easily be producing of the order of 12 or 14 trillion, sorry, billion, doses of COVID vaccines by that time, we could also be looking at global, a substantial degree of global immunity if we are charitable or ethical enough to make sure that it is distributed to countries which don't have the money to pay for them. Now, why is this important for financial markets? It's important because it will lift the hand of depression off the global economy. And there's no doubt in my mind that even though the global economy has had, you can call it whatever sort of a shape recovery you happen to like in terms of the letters of the alphabet, but it's had a recovery, but it is nothing compared to the recovery it would have if COVID was actually seen to be disappearing, no longer to be a death threat. If that happened, as the economy gets better, financial markets would get worse because monetary conditions would have to be tightened. And as you know, by looking at financial markets today, the more your favorite politicians are central bankers and I'm not saying they're not doing what is necessary, I'm saying the unintended consequences, the more they pump money into the system, the higher financial asset prices go. If you get to the state where it's the economy that's really going and liquidity is actually having to be tightened, then you may get into the odd situation where this is the trigger that we've been talking about. Essentially what happens is the economy goes up and financial asset prices started to start to tank. At that point in time, you've got all the loops and feedback that we were talking about earlier. That's one, two, zombie corporations. According to Bill White's old institution, and I think a paper he wrote, but if not, then I give credit to whoever did write it on zombie corporations. Back in 2017, 17% of total quoted corporations in the 14 largest economies were zombies. Now what are zombies? Zombies are corporations that can't cover the cost of doing business and have not done cover the cost of doing business for the last 10 years. No, the last three years and which have an 80% or greater chance of remaining a zombie corporation. Now we've done the same analysis now. On quoted stock market corporations. And we reckon the rate now is not 17% but probably 40%. This weighs enormously on future growth, productivity and financial asset returns. You cannot have 40% of global quoted equities which are zombie corporations and expect worldwide equity markets to go on rejoicing because central bankers are governments or printing and pouring in money. That won't last because the returns will be too low. And in the end, you do have to discount those returns to the present value of the shares. So what I think we have to be very careful that this zombie corporation is an extremely serious position. Thirdly, the reason for populism has been, the reason populism actually gains such strength and now appears to be reigning is I think very simple but I think people are overly assured about it. First of all, you have to recognize immediately that whereas we may think that populations, politicians can be substituted for central bankers and can do the fiscal job responsibly. When I look around the world, the quality of politicians is so bloody awful that I wouldn't trust them to run a sweet shop. Now that it gets worse if you consider populism. What actually has happened during COVID is that unlike death, cobalizer was the great unequalizer. It made the poorer poorer whether you're talking about emerging markets or whether you're talking about people who don't have the skill sets in our own society, these people got poorer. Popular trust in traditional party as crisis managers actually grew. If you look at the poll ratings of the CDU in Germany, they got stronger and stronger because Merkel looked like a safe pair of hands but do not forget for one second that the causes of populism have been reinforced by COVID and not weakened and it will come back. Fourthly, the big government is one permanent result of COVID. Not only in terms of the stock of sovereign debt which we put at 140% of GDP compared to 100% at the beginning of the year, that's one response. But there is also the popular demand that governments actually become big because they are expected to satisfy societal requests which themselves involve a higher degree of spending than in the days of American liberal, economic liberalism. Those days are over and it is now expected that big public spending in response to popular requests and a shift in the role of the state accordingly will be here to stay. That means we might have a kinder society but we probably will have a less productive economy and overall growth will be lower. Fifth, public debt in my view will only be sustainable not because of low interest rates and only because of low interest rates. What that means is that central banks and fiscal authorities are now the front door and back door of the same building and government will spend an issued debt and central banks will go on buying it and issuing money. Now that in a sense runs again slightly against what I said about the economic cycle coming back next year with a good vaccine and tightening financial monetary conditions. But that does not mean that the pattern of government spending, the pattern of cooperation with central banks, the matching and a marriage in a sense of fiscal policy and monetary policy will not go on because it will go on. Now there's one thing I would say and that is which I think is often neglected and that is that central bank digital currencies which I call CBDC, I hate aphorism but we have to call it something it's too long to say central bank digital currencies have been pushed forward enormously significantly by COVID. We now have 87 central banks studying it but above all and most advanced the people's bank of China. Now what is being looked at is the central bank either through commercial banks or in its own right, opening digital currency central bank back to digital currency accounts for people and for corporations and for directing money to that according to whatever is warranted by the cyclical circumstances are the exogenous crisis hitting an economy and when that money is allocated to that account then the good thing is you cut out the liquidity trap because essentially you can put a you can put a used by date on that money which has to be spent by such and such a date and on such a such a thing if you desire it. So it gives central banks enormous power. It may seem a long, long way away from Bank Canis and Aarham but it is not a long way from the central bank sitting next door to me because it is already functioning exactly in that way in the Shenzhen for example which is only 10 miles over the board 10 kilometers over the border. Now the negative thing about this is it gives of course an enormous amount of knowledge and control to governments and central banks about how people spend their pleasures their needs and their mobility but it's coming and it's coming fast. And finally I would say the return of inflation I would think to some degree will be caused by de-globalization where I think China has now accepted that it is going to be isolated certainly in terms of technology from the global system and it will which reverses globalization which as Bill White said globalization was a great miracle which reduced the cost of things for 20 years. Well, that's going into reverse and the result of that is a higher pressure of inflation from international trade and because domestic producers no longer face the same competition. And of course the other thing that will drive global inflation to some degree I believe is financial oppression. I think the only way that our politicians are going to see to get rid or to reduce the debt level is to inflate the way out of it. And the only way to inflate the way out of it is actually financial oppression. That's it. Thank you, David. Again, maybe as we started ending on a somewhat down big note one of the things you picked up on and you mentioned in your talk there was a bigger government which I think it's clear there is a trend towards bigger government in the Western world that that will lead to lower growth. I'd like to get the views from Michael and Danae on that and just by saying that, you know I suppose in theory a bigger state more taxes will lead to lower growth but the last time we had a big shift in terms of the size of the state in the post-second world war era that didn't take place and in fact it was sort of those glorious 30 years of growth in Europe. So is it necessarily the economic theory that a bigger state more taxes does dampen economic growth, Danae? I think when you look at kind of the fundamentals of the global economy at the moment for example, when you look at demographics when you look at kind of the level of spending that will be required to bring infrastructure back to more productive levels you can see how kind of a bigger state is what is needed, right? To kind of in the pensions area and infrastructure area and then at the same time and that's not so much about the discussion we're having about central banks because it becomes political you are also seeing kind of social democratic parties not doing as well. So there is a mismatch there between kind of what the economic conditions may be pointing to and how kind of political preferences of voters are seen and at the same time we are seeing now a little bit of a change in terms of fiscal policy becoming more expansionary but I think there's still a disconnect there. Michael? So I guess I'm always trying to tell my students that economics says very little about big government being or small government being good for growth or bad for growth and what we do know is bad government is bad for growth. So the question really would come down to what are the policies that are gonna be underpinning the expanse of the government. If they're just free giveaways and cookies for everyone then that's not a particularly I think growth enhancing strategy. If they're targeted towards things like education towards regional areas that are suffering then maybe they can. But again, I think it goes a little bit to David's point about populism the rise of populism I think and I agree actually with David that in many places the standard of politician and certainly their economic literacy whether it's good but they refuse to reveal it or it's just not good, I can't tell but certainly their public proclamations on economics often lead more towards the bad government view of things and the kind of giveaways and the yeah we can keep you all happy when that's not the adult conversation whereas there could be big government policies that I think would be still good for growth. So I'm slightly less nervous about just the size but I'm more nervous about the underlying policies. Great, look we've come to the end 90 minutes, clearly we have only quite to the surface this is such a massive area covering just as we've finished here with political populism but clearly the role of central banks many different aspects but hopefully it has been an informative discussion for everyone who's joined certainly has been to me and accessible to those who aren't central banking geeks as well. So I'd like to thank all of our speakers who are giving us their time today and being so clear and informative in the views that shared with us. So thank you all again. Thanks to those who tuned in and I wish you all a good day.