And any support we provide will be on terms that are as penal as we can make them, without precipitating the collapse we are trying to avoid ……… We look for a clean exit. The company may be required to run down or restructure its operations, under our surveillance, to the point where it can do without our support. We aim to protect the system, not to keep in being unviable banking capacity …...” And, paraphrasing Mervyn King in 2007: “if the [authorities] underwrite any [risk] that threatens to damage the economy as a whole, it encourages the view that as long as a bank takes the same sort of risks that other banks are taking then it is more likely that their problems will be insured ex post.” That provides a useful context for the debate about whether the cost of bailouts can somehow be recovered from the industry. Compared with a year ago, a number of ideas are now in circulation. One possibility is to establish a fund in advance. Another is to raise a levy on the surviving banks. An argument in favour of the former is that it would raise contributions from risky banks before they fail. And it would allow the levies to be related to the size of their uninsured creditors, as some in the US have suggested. 10 But I do just wonder whether it would be realistic to raise, and over the decades sustain, a sufficiently large fund.
Her articles and research cover topics such as mutual support of qualitative and quantitative methods in the field of intelligence or topics related to the debate in the intelligence community about intuition versus structured technique in prediction and decision making in conditions of risk and uncertainty. She is a supporter of structured methods and statistical, cybernetic and mathematical analysis in the development of prediction systems. One final thing about her background, which I am certain many of you will find interesting, is that she is a Marine Corps Black Belt Mixed Martial Arts Instructor. She has led the Marine Expeditionary Unit training in martial arts and trained over 200 Marines and certified 60 to the next higher belt. So all in all, a very impressive background and track record. Professor Sundri Khalsa is visiting the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest. Professor Marian Preda, the Rector of the University, wrote me about this visit. He pointed out that, in addition to being a specialist in the development of applications of quantitative and statistical methods for predictive information activity, Professor Khalsa has been working recently on matters of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, as they  1/2  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  influence strategic and national security issues. This is an area that has emerged at the overlap between (a) monetary and banking phenomena, (b) information technology advances, and increasingly salient (c) geopolitical and geo-economic developments.