3 Oxford Economics, Global Economic Databank, November 2015 4 oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/3681/An_emerging_middle_class.html 5 WFE 2015 and 2006 data 6 EY global IPO Trends 2015 and PWC Asia IPO Survey Report 2007–2011 7 Dealogic data 8 Based on a March 2014 report by ANZ Research titled “Caged Tiger: The Transformation of the Asian Financial  System”. bluenotes.anz.com/posts/2014/03/unleash-the-tiger/ 9 Statistics are based on Capgemini’s 20th World Wealth Report released in June 2016. 10 Asia-Pacific held USD 17.4 trillion in wealth with a 5.1 million HNWI population compared to North America’s  USD 16.6 trillion in HNWI wealth and 4.8 million in population. 11 US Energy Information Administration, Short-term energy outlook (Table 3d), November 10, 2015. 12 CSRC Vice Chairman Fang Xinghai made these remarks at the Shanghai Futures Exchange annual conference  in May 2016. 13 asean.org/storage/2015/11/AECat-a-glance-2016_web_version2.pdf 14 www.usasean.org/why-asean/asean-economy 15 “Fact Sheet on ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)” published by ASEAN Secretariat, December 2015. 16 www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/understanding-asean-seven-things-you-need-to-  know 17 Households with incomes exceeding the level at which they can begin to make significant discretionary  purchases. 18 Recently, Shanghai FTZ launched a pilot scheme to give foreign investors greater access to RMB-denominated  bonds in the FTZ. The Shanghai government will soon issue the first batch of FTZ bonds worth RMB 3 billion. 19 The Shanghai Insurance Exchange, China’s first insurance asset trading platform was launched in June 2016. With an aim of improving insurance asset management channels, its first two insurance asset products were launched a few weeks ago.
We have the same monetary policy as all the rest; our income is taxed at the same federal tax rate; and we are equally impacted by Washington’s tax, spending and regulatory policies. But we have better fiscal policy at the state level. We have no state income tax; we are a right-to-work state; we have state and local governments that, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, have for decades assiduously courted job creators – so much so that we have even outperformed the job creation of most every other major industrialized economy worldwide, as shown by the previous slide. Whither monetary policy? Now, back to the hue and cry of financial markets, and the question of further monetary accommodation. Interest rates are at record lows. Trillions of dollars are sitting on the sidelines, not being used for job creation. We know that in areas of the country where fiscal and regulatory policy incents businesses to expand – Texas is the most prominent of those places – easy money is more likely to be put to work than in places where government policy retards job creation. During the next few weeks as I contemplate the future course of monetary policy, I will be asking myself what good would it do to buy more mortgage-backed securities or more Treasuries when we have so much money sitting on the sidelines and yet have no sense of direction for the future of the federal government’s tax and spending policy.