Carolyn Wilkins: Financial stability - taking care of unfinished business

Remarks by Ms Carolyn Wilkins, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, at the Rotman School of Management conference "Are We Ready For the Next Financial Crisis?", Toronto, Ontario, 22 March 2018.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

A clear lesson of history is that a "sine qua non" for sustained economic recovery following a financial crisis is a thoroughgoing repair of the financial system.

(Former Chair of the US Federal Reserve System Janet Yellen, 2009)

Introduction

Here we are, 10 years after the financial crisis, still tallying the costs, studying causes and drawing lessons from it.

The outcome would have been worse in 2008 and the following years had it not been for the swift and coordinated efforts of policy-makers around the world to boost demand and repair the financial system. Even so, it has been estimated that the crisis cost the global economy 62 million jobs and more than US$10 trillion in lost output. Although Canada's recession was less deep than experienced in countries at the epicentre of the crisis, it was still painful for many people.