 I think it's important to mention the fact that the interest of such a working party is that we try to exchange views and questions and responses, if any, as vividly as possible because the idea is really to have a brainstorming which would be as I would say rich as possible with perhaps, and I'm speaking under the control of our rapporteur Hélène, perhaps with some preliminary professional conclusion in a number of domains where you would think that there is some kind of consensus or emerging consensus. So I would say prerequisite for this brainstorming to be as fruitful as possible would be that the first intervention of the speakers would be very short, as short as possible, I would suggest three, four minutes to mention the main issues that they think or the main question that they think would be worth examining. And then we have a lot of time perhaps to again exchange views between the panelists and with the participant in the working party. So thank you again very much for having accepted to speak. Let me mention the speakers once again because you have already their résumé in the documents. I have to thank Bertrand Bardet, he's been a financial director of credit agriculture, vice president of, not vice president, but general director and financial director of the World Bank. So he has a very extraordinary experience and now he came from, as he told me, macro to micro and he's the CEO of a blue like an orange, sustainable capital, all the program. Then we will have, I am mentioning them in alphabetical order and also in the order I suggest for the very short introduction I already mentioned, Daniel Dayanou, president of the fiscal council and the councillor of the governor for all the euro area affairs and he was also director of the National Bank of Romania. Jeff Frieden is professor in the department of Harvard University, the government, I would say department of the Harvard University and has been very, very influential in many universities and in many, many domains. I'm sorry because I translate poorly instead of having the French version, so correct me. The school of government, I should have said that. Department of government. Akinari Ori, ancient member of the Bank of Japan, deputy governor of Bank of Japan and now member of the Board of the Canon Institute for Global Studies, Akinari is like Jeff, like Bertrand speaker that we are hearing often here in this working party. Now we have also Kiernan Wook, who was ambassador of Korea in the OECD, is present of the Board, who is also councillor of the Bureau of Economic Research of the Asian and was vice minister of strategy and finance in the government. Also has an experience in the IMF. I mentioned that on the recommendation of John. He's professor, associate professor in finance at the University of Paris Dauphine, former CEO of Paris Bar, eminent banker and also president of the Board of IFRI. John Lipsky, Peterson distinguished scholar at the Nietzsche School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins. He was the first deputy managing director of the IMF and he's an eminent banker with a lot of experience in finance and private banking too. And Ellen Ray, professor of economy in the London Business School, she's a member of the Economic Commission of the French nation and also member of the High Council of Financial Stability, very well known as an eminent professor all over the world. So thank you so much again for your presence. It's a privilege. We are all conscious that it is a privilege and I will, without any further ado, give the floor to Bertrand. You have the floor Bertrand. Thank you. Thank you Jean-Claude. We try to be brief since I'm going to be a little on the side of the main questions probably although I think what I'm going to put on the table is likely to be central for the coming years. I'd like to touch base on the question that has been addressed this year in many places, the reset of capitalism. So there are a number of things which have happened this year. Is it for real or is it just a fade? It's early days to say. People have reacted to the business round table call end of August. You had the cover page of The Economist also which was somewhat misleading when you compared to the content on what our company is for. You had the initiatives of President Macron at the G7 called the business for inclusive growth with the OECD led by Emmanuel Faber, the CEO of Danone. And you have the growing importance of impact, sustainable development goals, related investments, et cetera, emphasized by the fact that the big players are moving. I mean, Moody's has bought one of the non-financial, extra-financial rating agencies in France. ISS has done the same in Germany. S&P just appointed a global aid for extra-financial ratings and so on and so forth. So there is something happening I think and it's big because of the pressure from mostly consumers, sometimes investors, but I think it's still fragile and it's still prone to washing. So you heard the expression green washing. I discovered a few weeks ago, for those of you who don't know, these are the sustainable development goals and now you call it rainbow washing, which is a diversification. So you still have on the one end a lot of goodwill with some CEOs, institutions which tend to do the great things, but there are no standouts, there are no real definitions so you can basically call whatever you want and depending on how you mention it you can say there are 30 trillion of dollars invested in ESG related products or if you're very strict you say it's less than $500 billion which have an impact in a way or another. And both are probably true. At a moment where people realize that capitalism as it is working today is unlikely to address the climate change issue and the social inequality issue naturally. You need a little bit of push. So is the glass half full or half empty? I don't know, but I think it's on top of the question that are being raised by the zero rate environment or negative rates environment which can be the worst or the best of things. It can be the worst if people are paralyzed and unable to do new things or take risk, et cetera, which so far seems to be the norm, or it can be the best if it forced people to think out of the box and realize that we just discussed that, okay, you can get minus 0.5% if you buy European bonds, but you can get 10 or 12% if you do the right thing in Africa or Latin America. I'm sorry, I'm a little biased in that. So I think it's more than just a coincidence. I think there are, again, a growing concern after the crisis. People realize that we have not really addressed the root causes of the financial crisis, 10 years down the road, we're still there, at the same time we're focused on climate issues and social issues is gaining traction in a world where there is still a big distrust for finance. So it might be a nice way to regain the trust of the consumer and investors by doing the right things, not sure we're getting there. But so the point is, how can we go beyond fashion, beyond marketing, beyond confusing products, beyond traditional corporate social responsibility? And basically, to be consistent with what we agreed in 2015, so in 2015 we agreed on climate, except one country now, but we agreed on the sustainable development goals, including climate, actually, and as far as I know, the US are still part of the sustainable development goal framework. So we have agreed on the framework on the roadmap. We have not discussed the financial system to get there. And we have to overcome a number of issues. It's still a very complex issue. It's a complex issue to measure. It's a complex issue to rate these things. The methodologies are different. Expectations are different. Vested interest are different. The data, I mean, are very difficult. It's very easy to say, yes, let's do the good things and then try to get the data as to confirm you've done the good things. It's something difficult. There is also an issue between emerging market and advanced economy. I mean, trying to invest in emerging markets, you don't want to impose a new Washington consensus, which is on sustainability now. We are back and now we have a great idea. You do this. Well, sometimes you have some resistance. And you will have probably some misselling issues. Think of Volkswagen. Volkswagen was considered a highlight of ESG before the diesel gate scandal. And so many people say, well, my God, I got a lot of diesel gate of Volkswagen shares and they were ESG and I felt comfortable and actually they were not. So to fill the glass to the end, I think we have to accept this diversity of approach today, even if skepticism still dominates, I think this is how we will create accountability. We have to go beyond the nice green bonds, to go beyond the nice social bonds, etc. And we need, at some stage, and I finish with that, to start working on the system. And actually, what do I mean with that? And again, it's a 20 years perspective. It's really, and I'm going to be very simplistic, to move from the Milton Friedman approach to the social purpose of business is to make profit. Always nice variation is to make profit for shareholders. Also, he added, to be fair, that you need to take into consideration societal acceptance of that. We tend to forget that important element. How do we move from that to what Colin Meyer in particular in Oxford say? The social purpose of business is to find profitable solutions for the planet and its people. So it's not profit as an end to an end, but profit as a means to an end. Which means entering into the nitty-gritty details of accounting, compensation, reporting, disclosure, regulatory framework, etc. And basically, at the end of the day, we connect capitalism with people and the territories, etc. And add a third dimension to the risk return traditional financial approach, which is risk return on sustainability or risk return on impact. How do we take into account the fact that we are in a finite world and we have to take this into consideration? And as I say, sometimes to irritate the accountants, we have to move from a mark to market system to a mark to planet system. And my kids say, Daddy, you should create the hashtag mark to planet, which is a nice suggestion. Thank you. It is a nice conclusion too, obviously. Thank you very, very much indeed. I take it that it is a responsibility also of public authorities to give the appropriate, I would say, rules, regulations, set of prices that would drive the decentralized decision of the private sector in the right direction without asking them to lose money because otherwise we are all lost. Thank you so much Bertrand. Danielle, you have the floor. Thank you, President Ruchet. I'll try to be very brief with the matrix of what I see of major developments and ongoing developments in the global space. Some of them I touched upon last year, but it seems to me that they are more visible nowadays as an age of major, major, huge disruptions. And seemingly it's an increasingly wild world, a lacking order and a lot of fragmentation and dissonance in many respects. A massive erosion of multilateralism. It's like an earthquake which is happening in view of what has prevailed after the Second World War, the so-called liberal international order, currency and trade wars, an erosion of the transatlantic relationship which is quite dismaying for Europeans, but also for Americans. Geopolitics very much on the agenda and the confrontation between the United States and China. I mean, to listen to one former European Prime Minister to say that we are threatened to turn into a colony either way, I mean, that is mind-boggling. I mean, the wording is quite, I think that was not adequate. Totally inadequate. It's like saying that Australia is a colony or a New Zealand. And those countries are not members of the European Union. I mean, one has to be a little bit wiser, I mean, especially having a background as a former Prime Minister, I'm very candid with you. Now, the shift of economic power which is inexorable, and I believe that at the end of the day, Americans and Chinese have to strike a deal for the sake of global common goods. Fourthly, there is a sense of desperation. And think about central banks under pressure. Thinking again, I mean, a new round of keys. Think again of major fiscal stimulus. And it's true, as Olivier Blanchard said, we have a different regime now with the neutral rate very low. It's true, but I'll make a fundamental distinction in this respect. What central banks reserve providing countries can do, emerging economies cannot do. So it's a different ball game. Shadow banking, and I'll get back to it when I have more time, but shadow banking poses enormous systemic risk. And I'm asking myself who's going to provide the Land of Lost Resort function in capital markets. Just keep in mind what happened in the rapid market in the United States lately. Now, climate change, I agree. It's also about capitalism or economic systems. It is very much true. But it's also something which is crippling our banking sector's huge exposure to sectors which are going to be impacted negatively by climate change. Climate change is an existential threat, probably more than artificial intelligence. And I fully agree that. And I agree that the business models have to change. And I welcome the letter of the 130 CEOs, but I don't know how much hypocrisy is there, whether they realize that something has to change, that companies have to respond to stakeholders, not only to shareholders. So it's, in our society, it's too much of a winner-stake-all game, the way our economic systems function. And ultimately, that's going to bring democracy down. And this is the fundamental threat we are facing. Whether you are a right-winger or a left-winger, it doesn't matter. If you believe in democracy, you have to do something about it. Okay, I'll stop at it. I have more to say about the, Libra for me, it's a huge challenge. A huge challenge. If parallel currencies are going to proliferate, central banks are going to lose control of their monetary policies. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, we need very, very much, Danielle. I take it that one of the connection between what you said is that in the McCarney analysis where those entities, private entities, public entities that would miss the enormous transformation that are coming might create financial risk of first magnitude. And it is another way, negative way to look at what's happening and the addition of various financial risks. Jeff, you have the floor. Great, so not surprisingly, since we've done this before, it flows in many ways from what Danielle was saying. There are a lot of issues we could discuss, and I hope we will, in international finance. International politics, international money and finance is particularly complex these days. We could talk about crisis management and whether they're paired for another crisis, about, as we did in the plenary session, the role of the dollar, the euro, perhaps other currencies, the politicization of finance with sanctions, how that relates to things like the rise of China, how all of that relates to socially responsible investing. So we could talk about all of those, but I think that if we did, if we did only that, we would miss the main issue that faces international finance today, not only international finance, but the international economy and anyone who believes in the desirability of an integrated international economic order. The main issue facing international finance and the international economy today is domestic and it's political. It is, as some have called it, a revolt of the masses, reminiscent of previous eras. To me, frankly, not that I agree with those who are representing the revoltors, many of whom I find revolting, but it is justifiable in the sense that there is a response or a reaction to perceptions of that globalism or globalization as Donald Trump calls it, has created extraordinary increases in income inequality, created pools of wealth that are undeserved, has contributed to the decline of communities of entire regions of countries. This is a perception that's very widespread. It's not just American, it's not just French, it's not just Brazilian, it's virtually global in almost all of the OECD countries and many developing countries as well. And I don't think we should fool ourselves, but the reality is that there's no question, at least in my mind, that international finance is a target, international finance and the international economic order and everybody that's involved in it. Whether that target is correctly aimed or not is another matter, but we have a precedent and the precedent is that of the interwar years in which mainstream political parties and mainstream political and economic actors were incapable of finding a solution to intractable problems that affected the lives of millions and tens and hundreds of millions of people. And if mainstream political parties and mainstream economic actors don't find solutions, others will fill that vacuum. And I think the big question is what will those in and around international financial institutions do? We have an early answer in the United States when for the first time since the 1930s we had two presidential candidates who ran on explicit campaigns, on explicit platforms of hostility to international trade, international finance and international investment. One of those candidates won the presidency. The other one is running for it again, Bernie Sanders. In response to the victory of someone who campaigned against globalism and international finance and international trade, the American international business community has essentially been silent. And the usual conclusion is, well, don't like those policies too much, but we did get tax cuts and we did get deregulation and maybe that's more important. And from the standpoint of any individual firm, that's probably true. From the standpoint of the international economic order and the international financial system, that's a terrible, terrible mistake that will lead us into, in my view, something like a repeat of the 1930s. So my question is, what are people going to do? When will the business community, when will international financial institutions start doing something about the fact that virtually every country in the world is facing, in some cases, majoritarian objections to the way the international economic and financial order is structured? Thank you very much indeed, Jeff. I'm not surprised by your analysis and also your, I would say, call for appropriate reaction. I must confess, I was amazed myself to see that even Hillary, you mentioned, of course, Bernie, but even Hillary was very much signaling that she would go back in comparison with the previous drive towards liberalism and open market. But thank you very, very much indeed. Again, for all the participants, you take note and what we would need would be your reaction, your questions, because we are restricting considerably. And I also take into account the fact that you probably had a paper I wrote with a number of questions only as a suggestion for things to be examined more carefully. But thank you so much, Jeff, for your call for appropriate response to populism. Now I take Akinai, you have the floor. Thank you, Monsieur le Président. I think I'd like to discuss three things spending one minute for each. One is prospects for global economic growth. Second is inflation, deflation. The third is financial system. The first, growth prospect. I think average economists are very gloomy about global economic growth next year. But I am perhaps somewhat more optimistic because at the moment there are three main elements which put downward pressures on economic growth of the world. One is, of course, US-China trade disputes. They are not only reducing trade volume between the US and China, but also putting a damper on business investment here and there, China is trading partner through an elevated uncertainty over business prospect. But as was agreed between US and China yesterday or two days ago, I think US or China will strike a deal. I wouldn't call a permanent peace treaty or something. It's just temporary truce. But I'm pretty sure Mr. Trump understands the issues of the implication for economic growth in the US and then presidential election. So this element will ease, in my view. I might be too optimistic, but this is first element. Second element is rapid slowdown in China's economic growth, which is attributable, in my view, to the leveraging there. I mean, because of huge debt accumulated there, Chinese authorities are smart enough to curb that trend. And this one too, this is a good thing, actually, for sustainability of China's economic growth long term, but putting a damper short term. But this, again, Chinese authorities seems a little bit concerned about excessive downward pressure. And so in recent months, monetary policy has been eased and also state controls on state-owned enterprises have been needs too. So these two negative elements tend to become weaker a little bit. The third element, I think this is most important for political developments. Manufacturing in the world economies is in large part influenced by so-called silicon cycle. Production of IT goods and machines are governed by cyclical forces of inventory stocking and de-stocking. Whose cycle consists typically two years up and two years down. And most recent expansionary phase began in early 2016 and peaked in early 2018. So if the two years rule continues to hold good, then it will be early 2020 or around the turn of the year that the cycle hits the bottom and begins to recover. So this is a good element. And if 5G and IoT development accelerates, then the economic button will come sooner and the ensuing recovery will gain momentum. So there's so much for economic growth perspective, prospect, low inflation. I think I did discuss this issue two years ago. Painful memories of GFCs to rankle in the minds of businessmen and the workers. So despite good economic performance during the past few years, workers still have some sort of sense of job insecurity and corporate businessmen are feeding some sort of liquidity shortage might break up anytime soon or something like that. And also I discussed the global competition for the damper on prices and IT, AI revolution. And as I did discuss two years ago, I think these momentum's not losing but slowing down. China's influence over global deflation coming to an end in my view because of high wage increases in China and also US-China disputes perhaps will limit the Chinese influence on prices in the US and elsewhere, okay. And IT revolution too, well, IT revolution sort of thing is depends on regulation. One footnote to this is inflation historically flared up. You know inflation historically flared up when inflation psychology picked up and it's very difficult to analyze psychology of people but in this regard I think 2020 presidential election may change the whole dynamics. If the election ends with a progressive president, you know we are all familiar with how radically US politics changed in the past from Jimmy Carter to Reagan and that sort of thing. So if 2020 US presidential election proves to be the same way, then the new president will formulate left-wing policies including universal health insurance coverage which I think is a good thing for American people but it may change psychology of American people to be more specific, psyche may become more inflation prone like an episode in the mid 1960s when the Johnson administration advocated guns and butter policy introducing Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 which invited the spike in prices in medical products actually and the triggering inflation psychology then. So much for inflation. Financial system, this is the greatest concern of mine. To be specific, a huge debt has been accumulated in the global market carrying negative interest rates. Japanese JGBs, European debts, not just short-term paper, long-term government bonds and mid-term corporate bonds. Negative interest rates are counterintuitive to me although macroeconomists attribute them to deflationary expectations. Are they serious? I know no survey that supports the negative inflation expectations over 10 years or longer. In addition, you have to bear in mind that holding a fixed income asset carries risks of not only inflation deflation but also many others like price volatility unrelated to, unrelated with inflation. Look, debtors must, you know, debtors may default. So, you know, liquidity premium should be paid there and also holders may die before maturity. So, negative interest rates or negative yields really defy these risks in my view, okay. I think investors simply hold a long-term debt carrying negative interest rates for arbitrage gain. They hope to earn long before maturity, wishing that they could escape scot-free from possible spikes in interest rates. Such decision-making based on, you know, Keyne's beauty context, beauty contest creates a bubble. If it burst, then a number of number of institutional investors will go under, okay. And they may entail a systemic run on asset management industry because, you know, once investors run on bond sales some asset managers may, will face a shortage of liquidity in bond markets which makes them difficult to execute the sale orders, okay. Resulting into cash shortage. So, you know, and remember, some of, or more than a few asset management companies hold assets under management over trillions, trillions of dollars, that's a huge problem. Now, viewed from a different angle, actually I discussed this two years ago too. I think, Inori, can I ask you, am I right or wrong when I say, one, on global growth you're relatively optimistic, a little bit more optimistic than the mainstream. Second, on getting out of the very, very low inflation regime, you are reasonably optimistic too. Of course, the bet is that the new present in the US will change a little bit, turn the table if I may. But, all taken into account, you see the situation different from the very, very low inflation that we have today, which is, of course, driving the central banks to be incredibly accommodating. Why don't you understand from the second message? Yeah, this is what I... And paradoxically, on the third message, you're very pessimistic, as a number of us, and you see the dramatic crisis looming. Well, this is what I'm getting at, actually. You know, Japanese low interest rates, negative interest, recently, who are the major investors? They are dollar-based investors, okay, particularly American institutional investors buying JGBs at negative interest rates. Why? Because of a wide spread between LIBO and OIS, or SOFA, whatever you call. Dollar liquidity shortage in the market. Why is that? Because major banks are reluctant to do market-making activities because they really fear that doing arbitrage on the LIBO and OIS, well, they have to expand their balance sheets, which requires huge capital, huge liquidity. As I said two years ago, Basel III and Dodd-Frank require too much of this kind of thing. Therefore, LIBO spread is wide there. So from viewpoint of American investors, on a swap basis, buying JGBs will give them profits over U.S. Treasury holdings. So that's why, that's a part of the reason. That American banks, I don't know, American investors buying JGBs at deep negative interest rates. I take your point, Akinori, it's very, very interesting. The element of speculation that you have on your market. We have a lot of American citizens here. We would like very much to have their own sentiment on what's going on on the JGB market. Very, very stimulating. But could you conclude now? Yes, please. So this kind of distorted regulations. On one hand, tight regulations on banks and much less regulations on shadow banks, in particular asset management company, created or make imbalances already there even worse. And because of a short-sighted speculations so widespread, it would unwind someday. And possibly creating fiasco in the system. So that's my major concern. That's very important. What you said is very important. I'm afraid we will find other pockets in the world. Pockets of finance, pockets of markets where we have also speculative abnormal behavior and bubbles, but yours of course is gigantic and very impressive. Can I turn to, I'm sorry. Behind this, of course, too much emphasis is given by the central bank to anti-deflation policy, of course. The central bank are the only game in town now, in many, many countries, including of course Japan. It's very abnormal, very abnormal situation. And we will discuss, but I see your connection between Jeff remarks and your own remark. But that being said, we turn to... Thank you, Mr. Turing. You have the floor. I'd like to make a three point. The first point is that I think we all agreed that there's a synchronized slowdown and with the potential, there might have recession. And there are a minefield of triggers. There are all these geopolitical factors. Anything can trigger some of the economy, pushing some of the economy into the recession. My question number one is that, how can you cope with it? Do we have a right tools to cope with that? You already talk about monetary game and basically monetary is losing its effectiveness. And there's a good chance that when you lower your interest further and further down with the easy monetary policy, actually you create a big debt bomb down the road. And there's a good possibility that we might end up financing the garbage project. For all of those things, we're gonna pay the price. My more concern is on the fiscal policy. Yesterday, I guess, Oliver Blanchard mentioned that because the monetary policy is tied up in many countries, fiscal might be the only game with low interest rate. But with all this populism rising in many countries, everybody, particularly populist politicians are trying to win the election. And with the slowly growing or sometimes decreasing pie, I guess most of the fiscal policy run the risk of ending up just to give away rather than spending in the more productive sectors or facilitate the structure investment. And the third thing is that during the 2008 crisis, we have a global coordination. We all remember G20 played a very instrumental role. I remember that in 2009 and so G20, all the leaders agreed to stand still and rollback of all protections and measures. And that helped a lot to avoid the worst outcome of the 2008 crisis. Now we don't have it. And we conveniently say, you know, so-called new normal about this low interest rate and all that stuff. But I don't think we can hide it behind this new normal about lack of international coordination. And this is very worrisome, particularly for countries in Asia, because Asia has been following up globalization and then we had a crisis two years ago with all this capital flow. And then we recovered and 10 years ago, we have this global financial crisis. But now the question is that if the global coordination or the role of G20 is no longer there, if we have a crisis, where can we rely on? Unfortunately, I'm very happy to tell that we haven't made a lot of progress. Since the two, 20 years ago crisis, we have created something called, right now they call it RFA, Regional Financial Arrangements. Europe GESM, Asia has come up with something called CMIM. Basically, it's a multilateralized swap between ASEAN 10 countries and Japan, Korea, China. Even though it's a walk in the progress, we have made a lot of progress. But at the same time, there are many missing blocks, missing links in terms of the paving capital because it's all promises, but there's no actual paving capital, for example. And we don't know how to coordinate once the crisis hits us between IMF and this Regional Financial Arrangements and many bilateral swaps. So this is also a big concern for many Asian countries. And finally, I just wanna mention that there's something called, we agreed on the G20, capital flow measures for macro-froidential purpose. And in Korea's case, in 2008 crisis, even though we had almost no exposure to US House movies market, and we are sitting on a pretty big amount of reserve at the time, $260 billion. Still, because we have a relatively large short-term debt, we are hit by the international investors. There was a pullout of money. It was only when we entered with the Federal Reserve, swiping range of $30 billion that the hemorrhage stopped. But actually, when you look at it, this short-term debt is not a really short-term debt. The large chunk of it is fictional debt. It's sort of, I don't wanna be too technical, but it's a forward-sale position of foreign banks in Korea. So after that, we implemented two measures. Basically, we charge the bank levy. And if it's less than one year borrowing, in the inflow stage, they have to pay additional 10 base point. And another thing is that all those derivative positions should be linked and limited by the capital base. And we did these two measures. What we found out is that the capital inflow does not change in terms of the amount. But basically, the structure changed. It's much more longer-term. It's much more stable. And this kind of capital flow measure, the macro-prudential purpose, I guess it should have been more encouraged and explored. IMF is much more positive on that, which is a little bit hesitant toward that. But I think this is something without global coordination, particularly we have to explore more. And finally, about this, we mentioned about this resetting of capitalism. And because of this perception or actual happening of inequality, I agree that we gotta do something about it. But what we found out is that we have now a little left-leaning government which emphasized a lot about justice, fairness, equality. But it's all great in saying as a cause. But when you try to implement it, you have this nightmare. Who will define justice? Who will define fairness? And so all these good intentions often end up with pretty bad results. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So I'm not saying the efforts is not worthwhile, but rather what I'm trying to point out, the risk, particularly on the populism and trying to address this inequality issue, you try to push too far and how to find the right equilibrium is something we have to all struggle in each countries. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. A lot of potential questions for you in the discussion. Andre, you have the floor. I would like to focus on this state of the global financial industry 12 years after the crisis quickly. The US is in very good shape, actually the US financial system is in good shape. There's no question about that. Europe, we have a problem. After 12 years of regulation, thanks to the CFS and Basel III, the balance sheets of the banks are in very good shape. The income statements are terrible. Today, the market value, the market cap of the major European banks is well below their net book value. Negative rates don't help at all, of course. So they are squeezed between regulation which has been very, I think, slightly stronger in Europe than in the US to be, to understate the situation. And this credit situation, which is very difficult. I remind you that in Europe, the banking system supplies 80% of the financing of the economy against 20% in the US. So it's very important in terms of the European economy. Second point, we're facing, we, I say I'm no longer in the banking system, I'm on the boards, but not involved directly. There is the revolution which was started in 2008 was also the first iPhone. Today, we see a number of so-called Neobanks which raise huge amounts of money trying to do the Amazon thing in banking. In other words, you get customers, you lose money for that, and you raise money and you raise hundreds of millions of dollars and hoping that one day you'll make money. An example is N26, a bank which was started in Germany, now has a European license and just announced three and a half million customers, losing money all the time, of course. So the French banks and the European banks in general are really squeezed. I'm worried because they're the ones who supply funds for their growth. Two, they're cutting staff significantly, which I think they have to do. Three, they have to live with a legacy of computer systems which did not anticipate the smartphone. So we may have overshot, to some extent, in terms of regulation. If you add to that anti-laundering measures, I just counted that in a small bank, around the world of a small bank in France, 12% of the staff is used only on money laundering and regulation questions, 12%. So, banking industry has never been very popular. In that case, I think there is a risk that it can have a negative impact on the European growth in the next few months, actually. Thank you very much. A few minutes, I'm sure. It's true that what you said, 80% or 75% of the financing in Europe comes through banks. In the US, it's only perhaps 25, something like that. The idea that markets are much more reliable in time of crisis than banks is a wrong idea, of course. Liquidity can evaporate for markets and creates absolute blockade of the financing of the US. And then, of course, you have always the possibility for the central bank to reconstitute liquidity on markets massively. It is what happened clearly in the last crisis, and it might happen in the next crisis with a lot of, of course, drawbacks and major difficulty. But thank you very much, André. Indeed, I think that what you said for the French banks is true for all European banks, I guess. And what is the most striking, but we have German citizens in this working party, is that the most important GDP by far of Europe, the most important exporter of Europe, the most brilliant economy of Europe in terms of competitiveness, has a banking system which does not correspond at all to what we should normally observe. But we will perhaps discuss that with the German friends. John, you have the floor. Thank you, Jean-Claude. I'm predictably in the position that pretty much everything has been said, but not everyone has said it. So I will try to differentiate a little bit, but I think main points have already been mentioned. Let me add one on European banking. Of course, one of the side effects of the regulation has been effectively a seeding of the international capital market business, the investment banking business, to non-Europeans, essentially American banks. And I don't think that was intentional, but it's certainly been one effect. I would like to hope that Akonori is correct in his optimism as the new managing director of the IMF pointed out in her inaugural speech last week, as the IMF gets ready to issue its forecasts in the world economic outlook, they find that 90% of world GDP is in economies that are slowing. Now, we haven't seen the data, Japan has essentially been at full employment. The US has been the only large economy growing above trend if we use the metric of falling unemployment rates and the US unemployment rate as you probably saw has now fallen to 50 year lows, even though participation rates aren't as high as they were back then. And what this suggests is that your slowing growth in the EU, which is starting point below trend at this time, and the major emerging economies, all the major emerging economies are suffering at this time from a slowdown in growth. So it's worth asking what is the cause, is there a common thread and there are a couple. The principal one is weakness in fixed investment in capital goods equipment and the software. And that runs through virtually all economies and especially advanced economies. It's worth asking, why is that occurring in a time in which monetary policy is accommodative to aggressively accommodate it and interest rates are generally at historic lows? It suggests some kind of deep uncertainty. And the fact that as I can only point it out, a substantial amount of the most important sovereign bond markets and now trading at negative yields is something I think that none of us ever anticipated could occur on a sustained basis. And I don't think we all understand it completely. How can this be possible? How can this be sustained? And what is the message? Certainly low inflation is one of it. But given the outlook for growth, given the consensus outlook for growth, given the likelihood, if anything, that the fundamentals point to a weakening of energy prices and commodity prices, it's somewhat hard to see why at least inflation expectations are going to change substantially in the near term and they could even potentially work lower. So there's every reason to think this very unanticipated and abnormal situation will continue. Let me switch then to the policy side. Or let me add, we've seen a growth in concerns about things like regional inequality, regional differences in growth rates within economies, within countries, adding to inequality. And inequality perceived as an increasingly important problem for economic policy. Also, awareness that things like gender concerns, gender inequality also undermines economic growth plus concerns about climate. All these are important. I would maintain that these concerns have been heightened by the sluggishness of growth. If growth was seemed more robust, these would seem less threatening. So let me just turn just briefly to the policy setting and just make the following simple points. I was happy to hear a mention of the G20. The initial G20 meeting in November, at the leader's level in November 2008 had four agenda items. One, restore global growth. Two, repair and reform the financial systems. Three, avoid new trade protectionism and promote new trade liberalization and four, reform the international financial institutions. And I would say the grading, if we were teachers grading the pupil, we would say incompletes on every single one of them. And there's, so the question is, is there a possibility for policy to make in the near term an important improvement in expectations and performance? And I would say very difficult at this time. One, a growing perception that we've seen that monetary policy accommodation seems to have run its course and increasing feeling among monetary authorities that they have been, as Jean-Claude said, the only game in town, but that game is ending. I would paraphrase, everyone remembers Mario Draghi's remarks in London in August 2012 when he said, we'll do whatever it takes. He was referring to saving the euro. And he went on to say, and believe me, it will be enough. But not that many people paid such close attention when he spoke again, and when he spoke at Jackson Hole two years later and said, with regard to improving performance of the European economy, he said, we'll do whatever we can and believe me, it won't be enough. What he said was fiscal and monetary, fiscal and structural policies are needed. But are those kinds of improvements likely? We still have the institutions, the G20, the Bretton Woods institutions, et cetera, that exist. They've been augmented by the regional finance arrangements. But do we really think that the international safety net and the institutional framework that we have put in place is adequate to represent a bulwark against new dangers, and I would say, incomplete as well. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. What you said is very stimulating. You're summing up of the program after the crisis and the poor results. At least, of course, we avoided the equivalent of the 30s in the 20th century. And it was extremely likely. What we did in the time and since then corresponds to an underlying set of problems in the advanced economy in particular, which is really totally dramatic. And it's very difficult to understand the monetary policies of the central bank if we don't realize that we are in an extraordinarily demanding environment in the advanced economy, because let's not forget, it was a crisis of the advanced economies. Elaine, I think you have the last word. Please. Merci Jean-Claude. Easy slot. So I think, as a macroeconomist, one underlying issue that has repeatedly come up and that is a very important issue right now is why I have a real rate solo. In a way, it underpins everything that most people have been saying. We don't understand exactly why they are solo. That constrains monetary policy massively. That is linked to the creation potentially of bubble and financial stability. And that puts huge financial risk, not only potentially in the banking sector, but also people have not talked about the insurance sector and various types of asset managers, the pension funds, et cetera. So this is a really big issue. Now, what do we know about it? So there are several theories out there. So one very prominent advocate of secular stagnation is, of course, Larry Summers. And he will relate to the decline in real rates to trends. And if he's right, then these trends are very persistent because they have to do with demography and productivity growth. And of course, we can't predict innovation and all that. Now, I happen to have done some research on this and I would tend to disagree with Larry Summers and to be much more on the Ken Rogoff side of things. I think that in order to understand long-term movements in real rates, one has to look at economic history and then that's gonna strike a chord with Jeff and the 1930s. But actually, if you look at the long-term pattern of movement on real rates, it turns out you can link them to other macroeconomic variables quite closely, consumption and wealth and consumption wealth ratios. And what you see is that really the only other episode that is similar to ours today is the 1930s and it's the big crisis. And in both cases, you have seen massive increase in wealth in the 1920s, that was the irrational exuberance period. We have seen that since the 1980s and 1990s in both cases linked to financial deregulation and all that. Then we have seen massive financial crisis. And then after the massive financial crisis, we've seen very long period of deleveraging and people underestimate how long it takes to deliver. And I think we are still in that swing, in that period of deleveraging and this is why the real rates tend to be quite low. If this is correct, that also points to a fact, but I mean, if this is correct, that points to that fact, but for other reasons I think this is correct as well, fiscal policy is the right tool right now. So fiscal policy is the right tool because when the interest rates are low, fiscal policy is more effective and of course when interest rates are negative, if you have to do investment, it's the right time to do it. Do we have to do investment? Actually we do. Everything we have told today and yesterday about climate change and having to do a transition requires a huge amount of private investment and public investment. So we're in the situation where from a cyclical point of view it looks like we should be investing and for survival point of view it looks like we actually should be investing. So everybody who says having a lot of debt or having a deficit right now is not a prudent strategy, I would turn it on its head. It's the opposite which is not prudent. We should really be investing a lot. Now, how do we invest? In order to invest, we need certainty. We need to get rid of some uncertainty which is very detrimental to investment behavior. We have a case experiment with Brexit. I won't dwell on that. But in terms of climate change, there's a lot of uncertainty. How do we go about that? What you want, and I think most economics who have worked on climate would agree here with me, you want a carbon price and you want a deterministic price for a carbon price at long horizon, okay? So here it's great that the chair is Ron Claude because I think there's one very great proposal I think out there by Christian Gaudier and Jacques Del Pla who proposes a creation of a carbon central bank where the carbon central bank would actually sell permits, okay? Volumes of permit in order to match them and this requires the work of scientists in order to be able to do that properly but it's possible to match our target of volume emissions into a deterministic path between now and 2050, say. The central bank can intervene by selling these permits at auctions and actually hit this path. Now if you do that, and of course you support it also by public investment, you may unleash a whole amount of private investment and you may actually do something positive about what is needed for the energy transition. Obviously it is not cost less. The carbon price will be biting, okay? So that requires a lot of accompanying redistributive measures, et cetera. We know that. Energy transition is not gonna be cost less but this would be a way of doing it while taking care of the uncertainty and unleashing investment. So I think this is something that would be really worth considering. Starting it in Europe seems very kind of natural but with the appropriate mechanisms at the border to deal with import contents of carbon, I think we could make progress and maybe increase the club of people adopting it down the road. Nali, fantastic. Do you publish a paper? Have you published a paper, Elaine, on this carbon central bank? The carbon central bank is not my idea. It's the idea by Christian Gaulier who you might know is a very good academic, extremely good finance, insurance, he's at the two school of economics and Jacques Delpla. And they have published a short note recently where they detail exactly how things would work and it's really worth considering and reading. Okay, thank you very much indeed. So we have a very rich set of ideas, proposals, I would say fears and I see much more fears to be frank and risks that could materialize than highly positive elements in what has been said. Only two or three remarks from me, very, very short. I have to say that when I look at the picture from Planet March, I see populism, a level of frustration in the fellow citizens of, as you said, very wisely, you have all advanced economy without absolutely exception, even the modalities are different, but it's the same in the US, UK, continental Europe, Japan, that's for one, an immense frustration of the population. Second, I see inflation extraordinarily low and I cannot help making the rapprochement. I think that there is an anomaly in the functioning of our system, which is that the Phillips curve does not function as in the past since the crisis and that even when you have full employment, there is no real increase of the wages and salaries. The fellow citizens prefer by far to protect their jobs instead of getting augmentations of wages and salaries and that is because they are under an immense new competition constrained coming from globalization, the emerging countries and science and technology not to speak of perhaps immigrants in their own national economy. So all this makes something which is abnormal. It's abnormal in my view that in Germany, you do not have, it's starting a little bit now, but over a long period of time, you didn't have what will have been expected from social partners in full employment. The same in the Netherlands, the same in Japan, same in Switzerland, same in certain way in the US with the paradox that the Republican president calls for the blue colors to get more wages and salaries, which says a lot on the overall sentiment that there is something wrong there. If they were more demanding, I'm not sure that the real wages and salaries will increase a lot because you have other fundamentals constraints that are underlying and we all know that. But at least we would have unit labor cost going higher and with unit labor cost going higher, inflation would be higher. So I have, we are in a Phillips curve, which is Keynesian, which is no more of a classic, if I may, Phillips curves. And then perhaps the central bank would be out of the fear, right or wrong, they have the fear that the deflationary risk could materialize and this is the reason why in this environment of very low inflation, they try to get out of this trap. But, and I dare myself, I will be as daring as Elen was. I knew what happens when the system does not function very well and when wages and salaries are permanently fixed at a too higher level. You engage with all partners in some kind of desinflation policy. It is what has been done in the Netherlands, in Europe, in France, after the Netherlands and in many other countries, as a matter of fact, all countries in order to converge towards the euro. So it was social partners, government, public authorities, private sector, joint partnership to arrive from increases of say seven, eight percent down to increases which would be in line with more or less the two percent of the inflation target, implicit target. And I am wondering whether we would not need to deliver the central banks from the trap and all the consequences in terms of financial instability that are associated with negative rates or very low rates, whether we should not try to have the reverse consensus if I may, not desinflation policy but policies in a way. It is what Trump says when he says I'm president of the US and I want the blue colors to get more wages and salaries. It seems I see something which looks a little bit as the reverse of what we did and I participated myself in the desinflation policy over 17 years in my own country and the euro would not exist had we not embarked in this policy. So now I have been much too bold and I think it would be excellent to have a sequence of remarks, comments, questions, observations. So please, fantastic. You have the floor. Yeah, thank you very much. You've mentioned Germany a couple of times and so I thought I'd bring in the chairman point of view. I'm Austrian so I can say things that the chairman don't like to hear, nonetheless. So about the chairman banking system, yeah? So there's a narrative that they hear all the time. They say, oh, the interest rates are so low and the margins are so low and then there's regulation that doesn't allow us to take fees and that squeezes our income statements. I think there is some truth to that but what is much more striking in Germany really is that the amount of the leveraging that we have already talked about was just immense and the IMF has criticized Germany's family owned companies recently. This gave rise to almost rebellion. They didn't like it at all but those family enterprises have financed the investment they did almost entirely out of returned profits and not going to their banks what they did typically over the history of German capitalism or go to public markets. So it's retained earnings and investment per se has been low. So the little investment it has taken place was financed by retained profits. So that's the first thing. The second comment I'd like to make is that we are in Germany now and the process of getting serious with the carbon price for the non ETS segment. So for cars, transportation and for buildings and the idea of a CO2 central bank is quite present in the discussion. I'm happy to hear that Golié has written about that but it's also part of the proposal of my institute and it's part of something that the PIC Institute the big climate change think tank in Berlin has advocated. So there might be something that we should pursue French and German economists. And the third point about the Phillips curve. So there's an interesting observation that's also just a couple of weeks old. There's been a revision in the German national accounts that shows that today the share of wage income over GDP is where it was in 1992. So we had actually a relatively strong recovery of the share of wages in national income from 2010 to today. So there has been wage growth but at the same time the capital share has been squeezed and that's maybe another side effect of low interest rates or flow capital costs so that the total value added and more could be paid out to workers without prices going up because the additional wage cuts has been absorbed by firms. So these are three points. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. And forgive me if I was alluding to the German citizen. Yeah, please. Thank you very much. Allow me please to speak in French to be very concise and very precise. I beg your pardon. No, I'm sorry because we have no translation. You have no translation. So, unfortunately there is. I will try, but I beg your pardon for my broken English. What? No, I would, I will try in English. If you... If you try English, I'm sorry to say that as a French I'm ashamed to say that. But you can... No, there are two or three ideas. I'm very impressed by Ellen's ideas of Carbon Central Bank. Yesterday we heard about the amount of currencies circulating in the world. I read some weeks ago about some very localized currencies to enhance circuitry, very short circuits. Do you think, I'm just asking. I have question. I have no idea to propose to this distinguished panel, but my question is today, and also my opinion is the trade war dispute between United States and China is soutendue by currency underlined by currency war also. Is those ideas, is today, can the world, is the world ready for International Central Bank? I see what you mean. I see the question. It seems to me that we cannot speak of currency wars when the renminbi is itself not a convertible currency. So at this stage, the renminbi not yet in the core of the international system. Still, of course, it is a currency which is very, very closely managed, and in a way it is a currency which... Trump has declared that at least part of the currency war was with the EU. His view is, and you can see the logic of it, his view is that the ECB's monetary policy from the standpoint of the US and international markets is aimed at keeping the euro weak and keeping the dollar strong, and you can look at the Big Mac index and see that we have an unprecedented circumstance in which basically every currency in the world, except Norway's Krona and the Swiss franc, is substantially undervalued, quote, unquote, relative to the dollar. So there is, I mean, in Trump's mind, there's a currency war and it's with Europe. Yeah, but I would totally disagree, of course, both with Trump and with the... I feel like that, but I'm just saying, if you want to understand the nature of the conflict, it's important to understand what the source is. Of course, of course. So do we have other comments on that particular point? Yeah, please. You want to respond to some of the panelists? So I think let me first check whether we have other questions from the participants that are not speakers. Yes? You have the floor. This is not a question, just comment on the chairman's discussion about the coordinated approach to inflation or deflation. And we had a very good experience in 1970s where government just requested just lowering the increase in wage and that kind of income policy. But we did the same effort this time on the opposite directions. I mean, the prime minister just mentioned many, many times to the private sector to raise wage, but never successful. So there seemed to be some kind of a symmetry about just a decrease or increase for this kind of policy. And also one more point, many people just say, because just interest rate is so low, there's no opportunity for more monetary policy. So why not just fiscal policy? Now let me just mention the case of Japan. We did have a very strong monetary policy, but because of that maybe almost full employment, so demand is enough so far in Japan. The problem is just total factor productivity, growth rate is shrinking. So obviously it just means surprise side policy become more important. The problem is surprise side policy is very difficult because the government to reach is very much limited. So without discussing surprise side policy or at least just increasing productivity, especially in the face of the declining real interest rate, we cannot just get out of this kind of difficulty. Maybe demand stimulation is necessary under circumstances of sudden decrease of the global demand, but still surprise side is so important at this moment. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for these remarks. Please. Yes, thank you. We have very interesting ideas and suggestions and innovation finance today, but just I'm wondering about the way we can sell some ideas to politicians we have today and what kind of politician we have, what kind of dialogue we can have when we talk about inflation and we understand today that the weakness of the union in different countries and politicians, this is what we have the case of GM in the United States about it. And it's very interesting to observe the way maybe this something is going on, this new is going on. But it is, if we have this, those ideas and it is for me it is, I would say very interesting technical, I would say proposal or suggestions or adaptation to the situation today, but who will apply those policies? It is politicians and what is the link we have and we can have with position today and if we come back to the crisis 2008, it was completely different because we have some, I would say leadership, world leadership we have and it was said that today we don't have this kind of leadership it is completely different, it dilutes in between different person with different completely opposite ideas. This is what, this is a question mark we have. Thank you. This is a pure brainstorming session. Again, I made the rapprochement between the populism and the political pressure, gigantic political pressure on the political sphere. So there are leverage or there is leverage to perhaps to go in the direction that wages and salaries could be more dynamic. And to the Japanese example, I would also say I fully agree that if you want to have the various corporate businesses on board, it has to be done nationally and also within some kind of international framework. And it happens, it is a miracle that all central banks of the advanced economy have now the same definition of price stability, namely 2%, so it could be an argument at the level of the G7, whatever, at the level of the G20 to go further. But again, I dare say that because I said we have the right to do anything, to say anything. Please, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Over yesterday and today, I suppose the most often heard words were the US-China trade conflicts. If you see that in the context or in relation with underlying hegemonic competition, then I think in this session, very session finance and economy should be really more worried about the global order and international economic cooperation. So in that regard, I would like to make observation and comments since G20 was mentioned a number of times here. I suppose today some of the economists or political economists tend to go as far as to say that the world is in danger of falling into a war period of what is called the Kinderburger Trap. What that means is the global economy will suffer from not enough public goods and therefore the world economy will suffer very much from it. Now, the US, particularly under the Trump administration now and according to our discussions all day yesterday and today, even after Mr. Trump, the similar social political and the geopolitical situation will last. If that is the case, the US will be unwilling to provide the public goods as it did before while China is also incapable, to some extent, and unwilling. Then there is much high likelihood that the world will suffer from much shortage of public goods and may lead to even the Kinderburger Trap if not to see that this trap. Now, so to avoid this trap and avoid this situation, the global community needs closer international cooperation who can do that without the hegemonic leader. So that in that connection, I suppose G20 can be considered because that is legitimate, the Forum for International Cooperation and it has a track record. As John and we worked very closely in fact throughout the G20 endeavors from the very beginning of the G20 endeavor in Washington, D.C. When G20 was created, of course there was shared a sense of let's not waste crisis as Chancellor Merkel actually first said exactly that terms. And with that share the sense, G20 achieved must. It's a record of saving the world, falling into a great depression-like situation and it helped to make the global economy only suffer what we call great recession. And then G20. In fact, the last G20 meeting, I personally said very, very disappointed and G20 could have done much more. And John knows very well when it was designed, it was supposed to be the process, not event, not for taking event, coming up with just, you know, rhetorics. But should have been the continuous process which really the world needs at this very moment and the coming years. So what I would like to say is that somehow we have to resuscitate or revitalize the process. I suppose if U.S. is not willing and the China is incapable, then I suppose like-minded countries, particularly middle powers, I think they can do something about it. And the next share country I understand is the Saudi Arabia and followed by the Italy. I think they can do something and the revitalize so that we can save the falling into Kindlebone. It's important that we are on the record, of course, to mention that I guess there is a very large consensus here to say that multilateralism is of the essence more even more now than before that you're absolutely right. What we have, the best informal grouping that exists for that is the G20. It was substituting to the G7 in the occasion of the crisis. The G7 accepted that the baton of the most important and pertinent informal grouping was the G20. You're absolutely right to mention that the G20 has positives and negatives. On the positive, I would nevertheless mention the fact that the work which has been done in Basel, the work which has been done in the Financial Stability Board, goes through a lot of mechanism through the international financial institutions that are very important in all this mechanism, then to the G20 and these consensus or various rules, regulations, standards, are stamped by the G20 even today. So we cannot say that it does not exist or it does not do the job. We can say it's not sufficient. You're concentrating on the banks but you're forgetting the non-banks, as has been said by a number of us. You can say a lot of things but it is still there, it still functions and it still produces, in my opinion, value added in the global governance. Where we have a failure, in my opinion, and John might have a sentiment on that, is that on the coordination of macro policies doesn't work. And the secretariat is the IMF for this particular part of the G20 franchise and it's true that it is not at all encouraging. And of course the fact that the President of the US himself says the hell with the multilateralism and so forth, still he was participating in my memory in the G20, in the G7 and with some kind of perhaps erratic behavior. He was nevertheless physically present and the US did not withdraw from the G20 or the G7. So I don't want to be optimistic because we have a lot of good reasons to be very pessimistic. What I know in advance, and it is ridiculous, when we have the new crisis, then you will see the G20 very active and doing a lot of things with this word in the back, clearly, and it was exactly what happened in 08 or 09, it was exactly that. When you have the word in the back, you react and you are doing crisis management more, I would say in a way which has been, of course, with a lot of defects, but we avoided the absolute drama. That being said, I also draw as a provisional conclusion that we have a large consensus to think that there is a probability of materialization of a very grave new crisis. And that is, of course, something which is also very important in our meditation. But Daniel, you had asked for the floor. Let me ask you something. I believe that the economic slowdown will continue. I believe also that we are kicking the can down the road. We need to be much more prank and say, we do not know. This is a stark reality. And this is why there are people who are thinking, look, in the end we'll resort to helicopter money, not only for the sake of raising the inflation rate, which has become an obsession. It's like inflation targeting is how to create inflation. It's not about price stability. It's about creating inflation. That depends if you... I'm saying it, I'm overshooting, but now secondly, I think we will avert a big crisis next year because the desperation, the resumption of QE, it's reality already. The talk about a new fiscal stimulus, especially where economists can undertake it, where the central banks are reserve currency providing banks and wherever there is fiscal space. What I fear, and as you emphasized, President Richer, is the liquidity issue. The Keynesian trap. QEs are basically injection of base money. Never in history probably. I mean, we replaced quasi-money created by commercial banks with base money. Never in modern history we had so huge introduction of base money in the systems. And we still fear sudden stops because liquidity can disappear all of a sudden, like water in the sand. And I'm asking myself, if there will be a correction, a massive correction on the stock exchange. So what could disappear? I mean, liquidity can very easily disappear. I mean, there are companies which sit on on massive amounts of liquidity. And what happened in the Ripper Market in the United States shows the fear of not having enough liquidity. So this is an issue. Who can provide liquidity when a new crisis strikes? Who? The Fed again, the ECB, the IMF. Can the IMF? No question. It's pretty questionable. And this is why when Mark Carney came with the idea of great, secondly, investment. John, you're right. But there is, as Mervin King said, radical uncertainty. Companies are not going to make investment, private companies. Even if we come up with a carbon tax. It's a price, but there are many prices. There are many, no, no, I mean, I can't. We want to change the way we think about it. Future, I agree. But I'm talking about radical uncertainty and the very low propensity invest. Then it's only governments. Government can undertake massive public investment. Then, Daniel, I'm sorry. And last, Daniel, seven minutes from the introduction of the meeting. So do you have another idea that you could float? What I think about Libra, why I think it should be strongly regulated. I think the central banks and regulators fully entitled to be more than cautious in accepting Libra and other similar assets. Because Facebook and other entities are huge. They can provide services to billions and billions. I take your point and I expect, we did not discuss the cryptocurrencies and all the extraordinary ideas that are floating here and there and the token, the crypto token and Libra and so forth. I know, Ellen, that you have very strong position because everybody heard it. And I think that perhaps you could say a word when you are the rapporteur for our meeting. Perhaps you could say a word on that because I think that what you said publicly and we all heard it was very stimulating. And I must say, I share very much the view of Daniel, that there is something which is very dangerous there. Okay, so we have two more questions. Yes, please. There's one thing which I don't fully understand. Listening to Laurent Fabius and Piané this morning, listening to the conversation that Geoffrey Frieden and Bertrand introduced today, it looks to me that the pricing of carbon could be a very simple way to introduce rationality in decisions. So if you increase it massively, then things will change. Why don't we do that? Even before creating the central bank. That's a very good question, but I'm afraid we would spend quite a lot of time on it. The point of the central bank is precisely to have a target price and you don't want a price on your spot price. You want the whole path, which is what the central bank could do very beautifully like we've in fashion targeting. So good luck with that. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. But a lot of other questions, I guess, because what do you do with the immense cold production of the Chinese? How would we impose the price? You have to have important carbon and important content at the border. This is also something disgusting, the document, and maybe also in the proposal. Then it would be very good that you would circulate the reference in order for us to plunge in the meditation. Thank you. You have the floor. Thank you. I sat up in my chair when I heard Jeff Frieden talk about sanctions because the Trump administration has basically only sanctions and tariffs as foreign policy tools. Then Jeff knocked me off my chair by saying he foresaw the distinct possibility of 1930s conditions coming in. Jeff, could you elucidate on both points? Okay, well, I had a couple of things in mind. The first is the collapse of cooperation in the 1930s, which was both cause and effect of the rise of mass dissatisfaction with the way that existing elites and existing political institutions and political parties had dealt with a crisis. So we have to understand that you've got bubbling up of discontent on the part of mass publics throughout the world and in an inadequate response. And that's in a way, that's what we think of as happening in the late 20s and early 1930s. It's interesting to note, by the way, and I don't mean this to say we are now in the 1930s, although I think there are some indications. I agree completely with Alain that this is a classic Rogoff-Reinhardt style vet crisis. Their average is five to seven years for recovery. The Europeans have, you know, in typical European fashion done it so well that it's taken 10 to 14 years to recover. The credit channel is completely blocked and all of the indications that people have given a goal on those lines. But to take the metaphor, and it is just a metaphor analogy, I never know the difference, take the analogy a little bit farther, you know, think back to what happened in the 1930s. In the 1930s, one set of countries, one set of governments, undertook really decisive action in response to these mass demands and declared a bank holiday basically decreed an industrial policy, put 5 million unemployed to work, ran for the first time in American peacetime history massive budget deficits, it took the dollar off gold, all of these major measures on the part of the Roosevelt administration, and then there's another group of countries that did something very, very similar. The Nazis, as Cain said in 1936, in his introduction to the German edition of General Theory, the Germans have, he's sorry to say, and he's very apologetic about it, the Germans have done exactly what I would have done in these circumstances. So I guess the point that I'm trying to make is, either we, I don't know who we is, I'm an academic, either people who actually are likely to take this in a cooperative, progressive, let's call it, direction, and I very much like the ideas that Ellen floated and that Bell not floated, either people take, either political leaders take it in a progressive direction or it's gonna be taken from them by the populists who are not gonna give up when they fail. They double down. If the Trump administration is unsuccessful in providing what its constituents want, they're not gonna declare defeat and say, well, let's go back to the status quo. They're gonna say it's all because of the bad international bankers and the multilateralists and the Chinese and the Europeans, and if we only raised tariffs another 25%, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there really is a sense in my mind of a bifurcation just as there was in the 1930s. You can go in a social democratic direction in 1930 or you can go in a fascist direction. There really was no other choice. And I think at this point, people have to recognize that this is not just another recession, just like it was not just another cyclical crisis. There is a fundamental questioning of the very foundation stone of the post-war international economic order and it's not coming from the developing countries. It's not coming from China. It's not coming from the Soviet Union. It's coming from, in some cases, majority populations in the advanced industrial countries or populations that are willing to stand behind political leaders that are promising results that require essentially undoing the international economic order as we know it. So that's sort of what I would call sort of, I mean, if I want to think about it, a call to action. The call to action is we have these long-term trends that have left many behind. They want answers. And we keep responding to those long-term trends by saying, well, the answer is education. The answer is infrastructure. The answer is a variety of other things. That's not the answer people want. And I'm not a politician. I'm just an academic. But politicians, what we need is politicians who can provide a politically attractive alternative that takes our countries in a direction that's acceptable to our people. And right now, we don't have that. And I think that the time is very dangerous. Sorry for that. I think all agree that the time are very dangerous. But from time to time, I am thinking. The US is the very place where populism is erupting and taking a dominant position. And maybe it will go on and on. What is the current account of the US? Minus 3.5% of, if I'm not misled, of the GDP. So the US already spent much more that it earns. And when you look at the monetary policy, it is extremely accommodating, obviously taking into account full employment. When you look at the fiscal policy, it's already extraordinary. So the recipe, if there is a recipe, is of a totally different nature from what was done in the 30s, it seems to me. Because there you had to embark in a very strong, I would say, ultra accommodating fiscal and monetary policy. But then it's already done in arc. So what's behind? I mean, we have no time. But the question is, what do you suggest, sir? You're an academic. You have all rights to suggest anything to the political sphere. And I think Akinari wants the last word. Please, Akinari. Analogy with the 30s, perhaps irrelevant of this moment, simply because in the 30s, the major problem was unemployment in the US, Japan and Germany. Now Japan, US, unemployment rate is lowest during the past half century. Absolutely true. So the major problem is low wage increase. So why don't we address policies directly to that? That's the incomes policy as Modoshige said. I agree. I agree. And it didn't work because it was not structured well enough. For those who learned or studied economics in the 70s, we are familiar with TIP, meaning tax-based incomes policy. Sydney Weintraub and Henley Wallach. Of course, Henley was governor of the Federal Reserve Board in those days and who was a regular visitor to Basel when I was working there, actually. But anyway, so why don't we revisit TIP, tax-based incomes policy? It's an idea. This is brainstorming. Yeah, I'm sorry, I can just say one sentence that I didn't mean to suggest that the conditions were, the economic conditions were similar. The problems are very different. But the fact that we face in some ways a crossroad or a fork in the road, I think are very similar. And I think that the kinds of ideas that people have been throwing around, whether it's universal basic income or tax-based incomes policy or the carbon price, all of these things are things that I as an academic would encourage politicians to start thinking about and talking about because if we don't come up with some alternative, I think we are in real trouble. I think it's le mot de la fin, if I may. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you all for this very, very fruitful discussion.