In April 2020, as the global economy was still reckoning with the many consequences of  Page 5  prolonged lockdowns, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil future contracts close to their expiry date went from positive to negative – people were willing to pay for you to take oil off their hands. Last year, in February 2021, the Great Texas Freeze hit as a result of several severe winter storms; we saw the coldest weather there for generations. This overwhelmed much of the state’s power infrastructure, leading to extraordinary spikes in natural gas and electricity prices – multiplied several hundred times in some markets. Earlier in March this year, the 3-month Nickel contract price rose $ per tonne in two days, and then rose a further $ per tonne in overnight trading, prompting the London Metal Exchange to suspend trading in nickel futures and cancel the overnight trades. These are absolutely extraordinary price moves – the previous historical record two-day increase was $ per tonne (September 2007). There are numerous lessons to be learned from this incident and we have announced an independent review into LME Clear’s governance and risk management framework. [9] CCP’s models and regulation are designed based on history. Initial margin covers price moves with at least 99 percent confidence. CCPs design stress scenarios to prepare for extreme but plausible events. We need more work on what to do about the implausible. [10]  (3) Ignore structural factors at your peril A basic lesson in science and ecology is that population structures matter.
During this period, the Albanian banking sector continued to increase its lending to the economy, albeit at lower paces. Difficulties added to the real sector of the economy and the exchange rate depreciation by about 12% in 2009 were followed by decreased credit quality and increased bank provisions to face the credit risk. Distinguished participants, The pre-crisis phenomena and those that occurred in 2008–2010, offer a valuable experience to economic actors and public authorities of each country in our region. Not to mention all, I would like to dwell only on some of them, which I consider important for enhancing the sustainability of our economy and of the financial system in the future. First, the region needs a better balance in the factors supporting the sustainable economic growth. I think that the public authorities should assign priority to increase in investments and implementation of stimulus policies for developing the competitive sectors. In this way, the country’s export capacity would grow by creating better conditions for a sustainable improvement of the external balance of our economy. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Second, closely related to the first issue, I would highlight the need for undertaking and deepening the structural reforms. This strategic objective remains a constant priority for each of our economy.