The closer these cushions are to levels that reflect potential future exposure across a more adverse set of market conditions, the more resilient markets and institutions will be under conditions of stress, and the less likely the prospect that the behavior by institutions will amplify financial shocks. Stress testing and scenario analysis is an important part of the process of calibrating this relationship between risk and capital and margin. The test of a sufficiently strong process is not simply the realism of the process used to measure potential losses, but the impact that it has on the decisions made by the institution on the size and type of exposures relative to earnings, capital and collateral or margin and the terms on which it extends credit. Let me conclude by noting again that we are in a period of perceived strength in economic fundamentals in the United States and many countries around the world. This strength has helped to induce significant reductions in a range of market-based perceptions of risk. Much of this confidence may prove warranted and durable, but the extent to which it endures will depend in part on the degree to which those running the major financial institutions in the United States use the opportunity presented by this period of relatively high profitability to strengthen their capacity to withstand a less favorable overall macroeconomic and financial environment.
I have mentioned two approaches, that of enhanced counterparty risk management and improved transparency and disclosure, which will hopefully help to address the concerns on excessive leverage and on opaqueness of HLIs. There remains the issue of aggressive trading practices, such as taking extreme measures to manipulate prices and to precipitate herding or panic selling by other market participants. Such practices undermine market stability. I therefore call upon the private sector market participants to review matters and devise a code of conduct to improve the standard of market behaviour and practices. For such a code to be effective, I believe it needs to be market specific and applicable to all market participants in that market. Conclusion Ladies and gentlemen, it has often been said that history, especially financial crisis, tends to repeat itself. In the last ten years alone, we have had the ERM crisis in 1992, the Mexican peso crisis in 1994/95 and the latest Asian crisis in 1997/98. Notwithstanding the disturbingly frequent occurrence of seemingly similar financial crises, I am inclined to believe that even though no two crises are exactly the same, if people do not learn from past mistakes, the market will continue to repeat its punishment. The only difference between the major financial crises in recent years is that the punishment is getting more and more severe, if not violent. I have cited three major challenges to learn from the mistakes in the last financial crises. First, domestic structural reforms. Secondly, monitoring and surveillance of capital flows.