Randal K Quarles: Government of union - achieving certainty in cross-border finance

Speech by Mr Randal K Quarles, Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the Financial Stability Board Workshop on "Pre-Positioning, Ring-Fencing, and Market Fragmentation", Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 26 September 2019.

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

Regulatory and supervisory colleagues, members of the Financial Stability Board's (FSB) Resolution Steering Group (ReSG) and Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation (SRC), representatives from academia, and the private sector: Thank you for being here, and for taking part in today's workshop on pre-positioning, ring-fencing, and market fragmentation. I particularly want to thank Ryozo Himino, our new SRC chair, for his leadership in highlighting these issues; his remarks and efforts around market fragmentation are especially timely, as we begin the difficult task of examining the post-crisis reforms. I also want to recognize and thank Sir Jon Cunliffe, for proposing a workshop where we can explore these issues together; as he recently said, quoting Ben Franklin, "we must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Finally, I want to thank the leadership and staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, for not just accommodating us, but making us feel welcome in the nation's first capital.

The Philadelphia Fed is three blocks north, and another three west, from the birthplace of American central banking. That birthplace is not the site of the First or Second Banks of the United States, whose neoclassical headquarters are still standing and open to the public. Instead, the first national bank sat just west of North 3rd Street and Chestnut: the Bank of North America.