While we can reflect back with pride on what we've accomplished, it's also an opportune time to look ahead and plan how to continue to create opportunities for our customers and clients, how to maintain our capital markets' international pre-eminence, and how to continue to enhance the public's trust and confidence in our industry. To do that, we have to understand the way the forces of change affect the way we do business. V. Industry Changes Technological innovation continues to spread around the globe like wildfire, reordering and reshaping the international economy. If technology is the engine for the New Economy, then the capital markets are the fuel. And our industry through its dramatic and innovative application of new technology is a powerful symbol of the New Economy.
New technologies create a tremendous demand for capital.
The availability of financing for these ideas and applications drives innovation at an even faster pace, which, in turn, brings about increased productivity, lower inflation, accelerated investment, and higher economic growth. This virtuous cycle, powered by our technological ingenuity and our innovative and accessible capital markets, is why the United States has benefited more than any other industrial country from the technology revolution. Countries such as Germany and Japan have access to the same technology as the U.S., but they haven't been able to match the financing capabilities of the U.S. capital markets. Indeed, our capital markets afford the U.S. a competitive advantage throughout the world, and effective and efficient capital markets are now viewed as an essential component for economic development of emerging nations. Technology has brought many benefits to investors, issuers, and the securities industry.