On the demand side, should emerging countries decouple to a large extend from the United States, their contributions would then be sufficient to maintain a significant pace of commodity prices growth. On the supply side, unexpected climate or geopolitical disruptions may lead to shocks on production, as in the past few years. On top of both factors, in the current context of raising inflation and troubled financial markets, commodities attract a growing part of investment, speeding up sometimes rather artificially their price increases. Second, the triggering of possible second round effects is a well known source of concern for the Governing Council of the ECB. The common desire of firms and households to offset  BIS Review 32/2008  1  profit margin and purchasing power losses stemming from inflationary shocks may lead to a wage-inflation spiral, ending in deteriorated output prospects and welfare losses to all parties. One should however note that nothing significant has materialised at this juncture. On the contrary, remunerations have remained well in line with productivity gains with, to take an example, reference wages increasing by 0.3% in France during the fourth quarter of last year. From this point of view, protracted shocks to food and commodity prices put the anchoring of inflation expectations and the credibility of monetary policy to the test. The recent upward trend in European household and market expectations may be of some concern.
They are increasingly a source of finance for UK businesses. However, the ‘dash for cash’ in March 202011 led to a rapid deterioration in the functioning even of advanced-economies’ government bond markets and created market dynamics significant enough to raise the cost of lending. The episode clearly demonstrated the need to build resilience in market-based finance. 12  Given the global nature of market-based finance, the effectiveness of any policies in the UK will depend in part on policies implemented in other major jurisdictions. We are therefore working with international counterparts in the Financial Stability Board to take coordinated action to address these issues – including on open-ended funds, margins, the liquidity structure and resilience of core markets, to name a few. In the meantime, the FPC (and other UK authorities) need to continue monitoring them, starting by ensuring there is reliable data to do so. 2.The growth of cryptoassets and decentralised finance: regulatory frameworks need to evolve Another important challenge is seen in cryptoassets and decentralised finance (DeFi) which in recent years have grown to represent around 1% of global financial assets.13 Cryptoasset technology is creating new financial assets, and new means of intermediation. Many services now facilitated by this technology mirror those available in the traditional financial sector, including lending, trading and exchange, investment management and insurance. While that activity is currently small, if the pace of growth seen in recent years continues, interlinkages with the traditional financial sector are likely to increase.