The mission of the Joint Year 2000 Council has four parts: First, to ensure a high level of attention on the Y2K computer challenge within the global financial supervisory community; second, to share information on regulatory and supervisory strategies and approaches; third, to discuss possible contingency measures; and fourth, to serve as a point of contact with national and international private-sector initiatives. After their meetings on May 8-9, 1998, the G-7 finance ministers called on the Joint Year 2000 Council and its Sponsoring Organizations to monitor the Y2K-related work in the financial industry worldwide and to take all possible steps to encourage readiness. The Council has met twice since being formed in early April and plans to meet frequently, almost monthly, between now and January, 2000. At our first meeting, we organized our work projects and approved our mission statement. At our second meeting, we met for the first time with an External Consultative Committee consisting of international public-sector and private-sector organizations. Meeting with this External Consultative Committee is intended to enhance the degree of information sharing and the raising of awareness on different aspects of the Year 2000 problem by both public and private sectors within the global financial markets.
Hence, on financial sector surveillance, I support the idea that all systemically important economies need to participate in financial sector surveillance or FSAP, including the stress testing, to support the global surveillance objectives. As for the overall global surveillance, we need more effective role of the IFIs, in particular the IMF. Effective surveillance means the capacity to ensure right policy actions by the public sector and sufficient risk awareness and management by the private sector so that policies and market responses generate positive feedbacks. Underpinning effective surveillance is of course the credibility and legitimacy of the governance structure of the IFIs. In this regard, I believe that we all need to be sincere in pushing for continued improvement of the IMF for it to be a truly credible and effective organization for surveillance. 2  BIS Review 34/2010  Dealing with the inherent instability: developing deep and broad financial markets and a multi-currency system I’d like to emphasize that even if we have achieved all the above and embraced good global citizenship, it is almost certain that there will be the next crisis. But, hopefully, this will not happen in the immediate future, and it will perhaps come from different sources of vulnerabilities. So, it is imperative that both the public and the private sectors remain very vigilant and risk-focused in identifying the changing nature of risks and new sources of vulnerabilities. The last point I’d like to touch upon is on the vulnerability in the current international monetary system.