Michael S Barr: Speech – "2023 US Treasury Market Conference"

Speech by Mr Michael S Barr, Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the 2023 US Treasury Market Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City, 16 November 2023.

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

I am pleased to join you today at the ninth annual U.S. Treasury Market Conference. This event is a joint effort by the agencies that make up the Inter-Agency Working Group on Treasury Market Surveillance and serves as a reflection of the group's ongoing, crucial collaboration.

The flash rally in the Treasury market in October 2014 revealed a need for a deeper understanding of Treasury market functioning. The report that the joint agencies produced in response sheds light on how the market had evolved. Since then, this annual conference has provided a forum for the official sector to come together with market participants and the scholarly community to identify ways to bolster the resilience of the Treasury market. This coordination has been important as we have worked together to study subsequent bouts of market stress. I am proud of the work done by the staff of the agencies and the private sector participants and wholeheartedly support our continued collaboration to advance work in this area.

Before I dive into my remarks, I want to thank the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for hosting this event once again and for its ongoing thought leadership on Treasury market functioning. I also wanted to acknowledge the important leadership of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in convening both the agencies and the private sector to analyze longer-term structural issues and to address emergent issues.

The Importance of the Treasury Market

Let me start by sharing a few thoughts on why I think work on Treasury market structure is so important to the public and the Federal Reserve.