The Financial Stability Oversight Council is responsible for designating utilities as systemically important. Through its role on the council, the Board helped develop the designation process that was released for comment in March.
The weak growth in Japan is partly a natural consequence of the country’s changing demographics, as the working-age population there has been shrinking since the mid-1990s. That, incidentally, is an economic policy challenge that awaits some euro area economies in the years to come – most notably Germany. 4.