Contingency Planning Despite our intensive efforts to prepare our computer systems, we must also make plans for dealing with problems that might occur at the Year 2000 rollover. As you know, the Federal Reserve has been involved in contingency planning and has dealt with various types of emergencies for many years.
Regarding the third factor, expectations of the tapering of U.S. Federal Reserve securities purchases last May brought about an increase in global risk aversion, reducing the prices of many financial assets, especially those of emerging markets, which had been favored in the previous two years.