Protecting economic muscle: Finance and the Covid crisis Speech given by Alex Brazier, Executive Director for Financial Stability Strategy and Risk, Bank of England Member of the Financial Policy Committee  CFO Virtual Agenda 23 July 2020  I am grateful to Imane Bakkar, Alina Barnett, Kiman Bassi, Richard Button, Mai Daher, Lee Foulger, Dan Gray, Benjamin King, Philip King, Sophie Stone, Matt Waldron, and Danny Walker for their assistance in preparing these remarks. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  These are immensely challenging and uncertain times for many of you. You have faced the reality of the economic numbers that hit the headlines: the precipitous fall in output, followed more recently by the beginnings of a normalisation in some sectors as public health measures have been eased. The path followed by the economy in recent months has had more to do with epidemiology than economics. How the public health situation, and therefore the economy, evolve over the coming months and quarters remains to be seen. The target of economic policy has been to minimise the longer-term ‘scarring’ of our economy’s muscle; muscle that is made up of your and other businesses. The aim is to minimise the harm to our productive capacity – to allow output and employment to get as close as possible to their pre-covid paths, once public health measures are lifted fully. Scarring could arise easily.
I am confident that the distinguished speakers from various institutions, who are present at this conference, would share further helpful ideas and suggestions (we already heard some very interesting ones in the previous discussions), thus ensuring the formulation of sound measures to be incorporated in our policies on remittances. And I strongly hope this exchange of experiences and expertise will continue in the future and contribute producing adequate human, infrastructure, and institutional capacities to transform remittances from potential into real driving forces for the development of our countries. Again, my highest consideration for this activity and Thank you for your attention! 5/5