Every single detail of micro line is visible, and it is the result of a meticulous and love of his work of a single artist, who worked with a view to attain the highest standard of perfection. Banknote printing of today, unlike in the early days of banknote history, uses sophisticated machinery for the highest degree of consistency. Millions of pieces are printed every day to the exact quality standard. If you take two pieces of banknotes of any denomination, chances are they are identical in every respect. But misprints do occur though very rare. Occasionally, members of the public get excited when they are in possession of irregular banknotes with some smudge of ink or more seriously incomplete portrait of certain icons. While we at Bank Negara will do everything we can to ensure every single banknote is fit for usage by removing any irregular ones from circulation, currency collectors are willing to pay a handsome premium to own imperfect banknotes. Dato’ Sharuddin, the President of the Malaysian Numismatic Heritage Club who is here with us today might have seen some of these irregular banknotes. But unfortunately, we at Bank Negara are never been able to get hold of such pieces so that we can exchange them. This despite all the effort made to retrieve such banknotes from circulation. I guess this gives credence to the economic axiom, scarcity enhances value. Banknotes are art masterpieces in their own right.
Should disturbances occur in a creditor country, their banks may tend to rein in their reaches to preserve liquidity thus worsen the affect on the borrower country. Another reason may be that lenders outside Asia tend to look at Asia as a block, not differentiating one country from another much. Therefore, in order to lessen the risk of crisis and contagion, we have to find ways for the Asian countries to prevent crisis or deal better with imbalances. This means dealing better with capital flows, or rather the sudden reversal of capital flows. Now comes the third question: Which initiative can be most effective in dealing with capital flows? The Asian governments have cooperated in certain schemes. The Chiang Mai Initiative whereby Asian countries sign swap agreements with each other to provide temporary financing to each other in emergencies. Even though the combined amounts exceed $ billion, it is still small compared to the volume of foreign exchange trade in the world. We also have a system of mutual surveillance, but Asian culture sometimes does not go for direct confrontation to such particular issues. The best safeguard, in my opinion, is therefore to have stronger structures in Asian countries to deal with financial shocks. This is why I attach much hope in the Asian Bond Markets Initiative being proposed. BIS Review 28/2003  1  This leads me to the fourth question: What is the Asian Bond Markets Initiative? What does it involve? The Asian Bond Markets Initiative can be viewed at 2 levels.