For several years, the Financial Stability Board's (FSB's) Official Sector Steering Group (OSSG) has been monitoring progress on three work streams: 1. to strengthen the IBORs by anchoring them to a greater number of transactions, and improve benchmark governance 2. to identify robust alternative risk-free rates and encourage derivatives to be referenced to them instead of the IBORs 3. to ensure that contracts referencing IBORs include robust fall-back provisions to reduce the risk of financial instability if an IBOR were to be discontinued.
Growth was much stronger in the first quarter than I had anticipated and appears to have slowed to trend in the second quarter. The legacy of the robust first-quarter growth was a decline in the unemployment rate to below 5% in the second quarter. I call the March 25 move, as a result, “just-in-time” monetary policy. I believe it was prudent.