12  By contrast, they contain no significant information about future inflation beyond past inflation itself. In other words, in regressions of inflation on lags of itself and lagged expectations, the estimated coefficients on the latter are typically statistically insignificant. 13  David Miles made this point in a recent speech (Miles (2015)). To take a few of many studies, see also Hansen and Singleton (1982), Campbell and Mankiw (1989) and Canzoneri et al (2005). 14  Bachmann et al (2015). 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  International experience: proper deflations are rare, especially in countries with floating currencies That doesn’t mean we can rest entirely easy. In particular, it would be wrong blithely to assume that positive nominal income growth will continue, come what may. Deflations have to start somewhere and there is a risk that falling prices will beget yet weaker or even negative wage growth – that today’s “good” deflation will metastasise into something a good deal worse. Bordo classifies “bad” disinflations as those that coincide with recessions, “ugly” episodes as steep and generalised falls in nominal quantities, all the uglier in the presence of large gross debts. However, my own view is that the chances of such an outcome are relatively low. I say that partly because base effects will naturally give a big positive impetus to annual inflation in early 2016.
Our global coordinators were amazed by our determination to create an innovative “Tap Facility” to allow the continued block creation of more Tracker units from the remaining portfolio of shares. Also we insisted on not giving any discount to the public at launch of the IPO and instead we offered an innovative back-end loaded incentive scheme in the form of a loyalty bonus. From the Government perspective, we had by April 2001 recouped more than the $ billion used by the Exchange Fund in the stock market operation. In total, we sold $ billion worth of shares into Tracker, received $ billion from dividends on our shareholdings and still retained $ billion in the Exchange Fund’s long term equity portfolio when the "tap" into Tracker was terminated. We could not have achieved this without the dedication and support of our highly professional project team members: Tracker Fund’s manager and custodian (our hosts tonight), the three global coordinators, the lawyers, the Marketing & PR Firms, colleagues at  BIS Review 142/2009  1  the SFC, HKEx & CCASS, and of course the Chairman (Mr TL Yang), all the directors and fellow staff of EFIL. If one were to mark the Tracker Fund as an exit strategy, I think it deserves a fine report card. We did dispose of the shares with minimal disruption to the market.