*  *  *  My comments today reflect my own views and are not an official position of the Board of Governors or the Federal Open Market Committee. I am grateful to William Nelson, Scott Alvarez, Rochelle Edge, William English, Michael Gibson, and Mark van der Weide of the Federal Reserve Board for their assistance.
I would like to thank Hal Scott for inviting me to address this conference. The financial system is built on trust, which, history shows, from time to time breaks down as a financial panic develops. Fortunately, major panics are relatively rare, but as we all know following the Great Financial Crisis, when they do occur they can be extremely destructive of economic activity.