Other concerns could include the burdens and deadweight losses associated with reserve requirements, the implications of the framework for the efficiency and resilience of money markets and government securities markets, and the framework’s ability to help support the efficiency and resilience of payment systems. 20  For example, a large supply of “money-like” assets provided by the official sector could crowd out some shortterm private sector liabilities, reducing the amount of maturity transformation in the financial system and improving financial stability. See, for example, Mark Carlson, Burcu Duygan-Bump, Fabio Natalucci, William R. Nelson, Marcelo Ochoa, Jeremy Stein, and Skander Van den Heuvel, “The Demand for Short-Term, Safe Assets and Financial Stability: Some Evidence and Implications for Central Bank Policies,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Finance and Economics Discussion Series, no. 2014–102, November 2014. 21  Maintaining a large balance sheet in normal times may be perceived as a “slack” variable that invites policymakers to use it for non-monetary policy objectives. See, for example, https://www.philadelphiafed.org/ publications/speeches/plosser/2010/09–24–10_swiss-national-bank. 22  For a discussion of footprint considerations in the design of the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repo operations, see Joshua Frost, Lorie Logan, Antoine Martin, Patrick McCabe, Fabio Natalucci, and Julie Remache, “Overnight RRP Operations as a Monetary Policy Tool: Some Design Considerations,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 712, February 2015.
Carmen’s work reminds us that the financial crisis of 2007/08 was far from unique in economic history. However, when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, even Carmen concludes that this time truly is different. The global lockdowns imposed as a reaction to the virus are something the world has never seen before. Page 3/4  Today, Carmen will talk to us about monetary policy in times of high public debt. Carmen has published extensively on the various implications of high public debt. For instance, in an influential paper written with Maria Belen Sbrancia, Carmen showed how Western governments managed to repay their debt after World War II through a set of policies known as ‘financial repression’. Measures such as legal ceilings on interest rates and restrictions on international capital flows created an environment where domestic savers had no other option than to invest in low-yielding government debt. Financial repression was particularly effective in liquidating public debt when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation. The relation between monetary policy and government finances is an old and critical issue in central banking. It is also a very timely topic, given the massive increase in public debt that many countries have experienced since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. We are living through times of extraordinary uncertainty. What we can safely assume, however, is that the interplay between monetary and fiscal policy will be among the key challenges that central bankers will face in the years to come.