The initiatives which had been taken in the late nineties as offshore centres flourished, and which gave rise to the Financial Stability Forum and the FATF did not replicate themselves with the same aggression and with concerted action as in the case of the offshore centres issue, nor did these entities evaluate the nature of the problem sufficiently quickly.
As cracks in the financial architecture surfaced and new vulnerabilities were exposed, it became increasingly important that both market participants and policy markers improved their understanding and assessment of threats to financial stability, and take steps, where appropriate, to contain and reduce them.