2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  2  In part, the deceleration of the global economy reflects the shift from accommodative to tighter financial conditions that occurred initially in emerging economies, then in most advanced economies, and finally and sharply in the United States (Chart 2). Last year, the returns on all major asset classes from equities to credit to sovereign debt were negative. Cash once again was king. Chart 2: Global financial conditions indices tightened over 2018 United Kingdom  Standard deviations from historical average  8  United States  7  Emerging Market Economies  6  Global  5 4 3 2 1 0 -1  -2 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Sources: Bloomberg Finance L.P., Eikon by Refinitiv and Bank calculations. The tightening of financial conditions globally partly reflected the usual – if somewhat delayed – reaction to the tightening of monetary policy.1 Over the past year, the withdrawal of monetary policy accommodation gathered pace. The Fed raised interest rates four times, and the Bank of England and ten other G20 central banks also tightened policy. In addition, after five years in which there was no new net issuance of G7 government debt, new government borrowing outweighed central bank purchases by more than $ trillion for the first time since 2012. Potentially more seriously, the slowing in global momentum may also be the product of rising trade tensions and growing policy uncertainty.
This specific point highlights the more general progress that has been made improving the resilience of the core of the financial sector. Banks in most regions are now more likely to be stabilisers rather than amplifiers of shocks. Regulation has made banks less complex and more focused. They lend more to the real economy and less to each other. Trading assets have been cut in half, and interbank lending is down by one-third. And their resilience in most jurisdictions has been transformed. For example, UK banks have CET1 ratios of about 15%, more than three times their pre-crisis level. Their aggregate MREL is 26%. They hold £ trillion  21  Based on all widely traded CLOs in the US and Europe. 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  of high quality liquid assets, a four-fold increase over the past decade. And their short-term wholesale funding has fallen from 15% to 4% of balance sheets. There is also greater supervisory scrutiny, not least through stringent stress tests. Indeed, in the past few years, major UK banks have been tested against all the major risks I will cover today (from China to inflation scares plus a few others for good measure). The Story Thus Far While there are pockets of risk and global growth is still decelerating, the combination of the policy response and the state of the current imbalances in advanced economies suggest that global growth is more likely than not to stabilise eventually around its new, modest trend.