There are also plans to strengthen the capital treatment of liquidity facilities extended by banks to support off-balance sheet vehicles such as asset-backed commercial paper conduits. Furthermore, the Committee will strengthen the capital requirements in the trading book, given the large growth in trading-book assets and the wide range of instruments held there, some of them quite complex and less liquid.
First, technological advances allowed the ICT-producing sectors themselves to exhibit rapid productivity growth. For example, the development of more reliable semiconductor manufacturing equipment and faster wafer-inspection technologies increased the rate at which companies such as Intel were able to produce microprocessors.